Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I did not see that suggestion, but it is now recorded in Hansard. At the London conference on Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago, which was co-chaired by ourselves, the United Nations and the Afghan Government, we looked carefully again at how we could tackle the drugs problem. While all suggestions are usefully received, the work that the United Nations, the Afghan Government and ourselves are doing on alternative livelihoods and on targeting the traffickers and the backers is the route we want to go down.

Lord Bach: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Countess, and I pay tribute to her knowledge of these matters. The vast majority of notifiable diseases that are detected are detected ante mortem rather than post mortem. The tragic foot and mouth outbreak was detected ante mortem. As for post-mortem examinations, the noble Baroness is right: ear tags are no use at all, because they have been got rid of with the heads of the sheep. There is a package of identification and tracing measures through the documentation. All sheep arriving at an abattoir must be accompanied by movement documents that provide details of the holding that the animals came from. That is required by legislation and actively enforced. The documentation that accompanies each animal means that, if a notifiable disease is suspected post mortem, the animal can be traced back to the consignment in which it arrived at the abattoir through the abattoir's internal tracing mechanisms.

Baroness Hayman: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	What steps they are taking to ensure the successful roll out of the National Bowel Screening Programme in April 2006.

Lord Warner: My Lords, the Government have stated their commitment to a national bowel cancer screening programme. On 30 January 2006, the new health White Paper, Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services, reaffirmed that the programme would be rolled out from April 2006. The Department of Health's central budgets for 2006-07 are being finalised, and announcements will be made as soon as possible. The NHS cancer screening programmes are taking all the necessary action to ensure the successful roll-out of the programme.

Baroness Hayman: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that partially reassuring Answer, particularly in the light of persistent reports that the programme would be abandoned or delayed. Can I press him to go further regarding budgeting and be more specific about when and how the £37.5 million allocated to make the programme a success and save 1,000 lives a year will actually be available to the NHS to ensure a successful roll-out in April?

Lord Warner: My Lords, I am not surprised to be pressed by my noble friend on the issue. I am confident that the necessary funding will be provided in 2006-07 to ensure the staffing of the national roll-out, as promised in the White Paper. We will make an announcement shortly.

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the bowel cancer screening programme that we are discussing now forms an absolutely essential cornerstone of the Cancer Plan launched in 2000? Does he share my concerns about the potential uptake by people from ethnic minorities of bowel screening? I understand that research undertaken by the University of Warwick has shown that, although it is possible to achieve the 60 per cent uptake required for the success of the programme, that figure can mask very poor uptake among people from south Asia and the Muslim community in particular.

Earl Howe: My Lords, does the Minister accept that uncertainty over the roll-out of the programme is having a detrimental effect on patients and those who care for them? In the light of his Answer, will he do all he can to allay that uncertainty and to advance the announcement about the programme as swiftly as possible?

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 19 and 20. Noble Lords may recall that I brought forward an amendment to the legal assistance clause at Third Reading, to enable the new commission to support proceedings alleging that domestic legislation is incompatible with EC legislation combating discrimination on grounds of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. The purpose of the amendment was to ensure that there were no fewer powers available to the new commission than are currently available to the existing commissions, as case law has determined that this power is available to the Equal Opportunities Commission.
	Noble Lords may also recall that, although the amendment was accepted by this House, concern was expressed about the drafting. I agreed to take this away and consider the substance further with my ministerial colleagues. After further reflection, my honourable friend the Minister for Women and Equality, Meg Munn, decided to bring forward Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 to clarify Clause 28(11)(a). Amendment No. 19 inserts a specific reference to gender reassignment, thus placing beyond doubt the statutory authority for the commission to support proceedings in respect of EC law regarding that.
	Similarly, my honourable friend brought forward Amendment No. 20 for the purpose of clarification. Concerns were raised in your Lordships' House that an express reference in subsection (11)(a) to,
	"equality of opportunity between men and women",
	and no mention of race implied that we attached less importance to provisions of Community law relating to equality of opportunity for race. That was never our intention and, to make that very clear, we proposed the removal of the express reference to men and women. We were persuaded that the reference in subsection (11) to the discrimination grounds was sufficient to embrace Community provisions on equality. The reference to "sex" in subsection (11)(a) therefore includes equality of opportunity and equal treatment, which brings in equal pay matters, and so on. Consequently, we see no need for the express provision on equality of opportunity between men and women in the clause. Therefore, Amendment No. 20 proposes to remove it.
	Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 19 and 20.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)

Lord Lester of Herne Hill: My Lords, we welcome these amendments. I want briefly to raise one point. The existing equality agencies, especially the CRE and the EOC, have the power to take into account the equality provisions of European Community law, whether it is for gender or race. Under EU law, as under the Race Relations Act, "race" includes discrimination based on nationality, national origins and so on. My understanding of the legal position is that, if the CRE found some value-added EU law on discrimination based on nationality, national origins and race which went further than the Race Relations Act, under the European Communities Act 1972 the Race Relations Act has to be read and given effect compatibly. Therefore, the CRE has the power to give legal assistance so that individuals can rely on European Community law on race, as on gender.
	I welcome the amendment because deleting,
	"equality of opportunity between men and women",
	makes it clear, to me at any rate, that the reference to the equality enactments covers gender and, indeed, race—and, unless I am corrected, that it covers relevant EU law in the areas where it is linked with our equality law. These amendments make it more likely that that is the position than the previous amendments did. I welcome them on that basis. If I have it wrong, I would be very grateful to be corrected by the Minister before we approve the amendments.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	22 Clause 45, page 28, line 6, leave out "to refuse" and insert "refusing"
	23 Clause 47, page 28, line 36, leave out "46(1), (2) and (5)" and insert "46"
	24 page 29, line 11, leave out "(5)" and insert "(3)"
	26 Clause 51, page 32, leave out line 47
	27 page 33, leave out line 11
	28 page 33, leave out line 14
	29 page 33, line 17, leave out "(but this exception does not have effect in relation to harassment)"
	30 Clause 76, page 44, line 21, at end insert—
	"(2) For regulation 3(1)(a) of the Regulations substitute—
	"(a) on the grounds of the religion or belief of B or of any other person except A (whether or not it is also A's religion or belief) A treats B less favourably than he treats or would treat other persons;".
	(3) Omit regulation 3(2) of the Regulations."

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 22 to 24 and 26 to 30. These amendments are all minor and technical. Amendment No. 22 corrects the grammar of the part of Clause 45 that deals with exceptions for providers of specialist services. It has no other purpose or effect.
	Amendments Nos. 23 and 24 change Clause 47 to reflect numbering changes in Clause 46, which, as your Lordships will remember, followed the removal of provisions relating to harassment from that clause. Amendments Nos. 26 to 29 remove remaining references to harassment from Clause 51, which deals with public authorities. Those changes are consequent on the removal by your Lordships' House of the harassment provisions from Part 2.
	Amendment No. 30 changes the definition of discrimination in Regulation 3 of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 to make it clear that religious discrimination in the area of employment and vocational training is unlawful, even when committed against a person who is of the same religion as the discriminator. That is the intention and, we believe, the effect of the regulation as it stands, but the amendment is there to resolve any doubt about the matter. We made a similar amendment in your Lordships' House to what is now Clause 45. Having considered the case made in Committee in the other place that that leaves an apparent inconsistency between the Bill as amended by the Government in this House and the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations, we have concluded that a similar clarification to the regulations would be helpful.
	As I said, these are all necessary, minor amendments and I commend them to your Lordships' House.
	Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 22 to 24 and 26 to 30.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I beg to move that the House agrees with the Commons in their Amendment No. 38. The amendment would limit the scope of an inquiry that the commission may undertake under Clause 16, which under the Bill as it left your Lordships' House could relate to any of the commission's duties under Clauses 8, 9 and 10. Under this amendment, the commission would not be able to consider in the course of an inquiry any human rights matters relating to the intelligence services. These are defined in paragraph 14 of Schedule 2 as the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Headquarters.
	We propose this amendment to ensure that the commission's inquiries power does not jeopardise the important work of the intelligence services. This is a reflection of the broad scope of human rights considerations. Of course, there already exists a mechanism by which judicial reviews may be brought against the intelligence services before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is properly equipped to handle matters and evidence that may be sensitive to national security. The convention rights under the Human Rights Act may be relied upon by claimants in such cases.
	This exclusion does not affect the ability of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights to conduct inquiries into equality matters in pursuance of its duties under Clauses 8 and 10, so long as it expressly excludes human rights matters from consideration. This is a small but important change to ensure that the work of the intelligence services is not compromised.
	Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 38.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.
	39 Schedule 3, page 79, line 8, at end insert—
	"50A Section 49I (conciliation of disputes: rented housing in Scotland) shall cease to have effect."
	40 page 80, line 9, at end insert—
	"Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 (asp 10)
	61 In paragraph 8(e) of Schedule 5 to the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, for "Disability Rights Commission" substitute "Commission for Equality and Human Rights".
	Housing (Scotland) Act 2006 (asp 01)
	62 In each of the following provisions of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2006, for "Disability Rights Commission" substitute "Commission for Equality and Human Rights"—
	(a) section 53(1)(g),
	(b) section 65(4), and
	(c) section 67(2)(b)(i)."
	41 Schedule 4, page 82, line 10, column 2, at end insert—
	"Section 49I."

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Ashton of Upholland, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
	Before I start, I should say that I have informed the noble Baronesses, Lady Hanham and Lady Scott of Needham Market, that I have to attend an event with the Chief Justice of Pakistan. I am very keen to be here for the winding-up speeches, but if I am not, I hope the House will forgive me for that discourtesy.
	The legitimacy of our democracy depends on three things: first, all those who are eligible having the right to vote; secondly, everyone wanting to vote; and, finally, no one abusing the vote. Access, participation and security are the three principles that underpin the Bill. They are principles which deserve support from all sides of the House.
	These issues are of great importance to the well-being of democracy. We all agree on the need for a democratic system which, in the way that it works, has the confidence of the people and is the envy of the world. We will not deal with this Bill in a party political way. It is a Bill for debate—maybe even for disagreement—but also one whereby, in the way Parliament approaches it, we must seek to increase confidence in the system.
	The Bill aims to tackle the growing problem of under-registration in this country. The Electoral Commission estimates that between 3 million and 4 million eligible voters in this country are not registered to vote. This is a shocking statistic. It means that almost 10 per cent of the eligible electorate in Great Britain is disenfranchised. Furthermore, it is clear that this is a problem which affects some groups more than others. The concept of social inclusion—ensuring that all communities have access to decent schools, hospitals, housing and other services—is one with which we are all familiar. We are less likely to consider access to voting as part of the problem.
	However, the statistics for non-registration are clear: more than 30 per cent in some black and minority ethnic groups but 6 per cent for white people; 18 per cent are unregistered in inner London, but 6 per cent in the south-east generally; 16 per cent of those between 18 and 24 years of age are unregistered, but around 4 to 5 per cent of those who are 45 and over; and 15 per cent of those who live in rented accommodation are not registered, whereas 3 per cent of those who are home owners are not registered. So if you are a middle-aged, middle class home-owner living in the suburbs, the chances are you are on the electoral register and you turn out to vote. If you are younger, living in rented accommodation in an inner city area and belong to certain ethnic minority groups, you are far less likely to be registered and therefore unable to exercise your right to vote.
	The map of political engagement and participation in our country mirrors the map of social inequality in our society. All governments have and accept a responsibility to protect against this kind of democratic divide. The Bill includes measures to help ensure that those hard-to-reach groups are included on the electoral register. The key to tackling under-registration is giving electoral registration officers the powers, the duties and the resources they need. It is also about extending current best practice and ensuring that all registration officers take all the necessary steps to get people registered.
	We are introducing a new duty for electoral registration officers to take all necessary steps to ensure comprehensive registers. The Bill sets out that these steps must include: sending the canvass form more than once to any address; making house-to-house inquires on more than one occasion; making contact by such other means as the registration officer thinks appropriate with persons who do not have an entry in a register; data-sharing—that is, inspecting any records held by any person which the registration officer is permitted to inspect; and providing training to persons under the direction or control of the electoral registration officer in connection with the carrying out of the duty.
	To improve convenience for the voter, the Bill will extend closing dates for registering to vote until after an election has been called instead of the current cut-off of around six weeks before the election. It is once the election campaign is under way that people often feel most motivated to get on the register, as anybody involved in elections will know. So the Bill allows them to register up to 11 working days before the election.
	The Bill also includes provisions to establish the co-ordinated online record of electors—CORE—to improve the accuracy and integrity of electoral registers and support national access. CORE will provide for the joining up of all the information currently held on over 400 locally held registers. This will eventually provide a single point of access for voters, enabling them to check the accuracy of their own registration details and to request changes to be made to these data. CORE will also allow cross-checking between registers, which could be used to detect people illegitimately registered in more than one place.
	An important aspect of registration in Great Britain is that the electoral register is a public document that is open to public scrutiny. However, while respecting this principle of openness, we must also ensure that the system properly provides for vulnerable people——for example, those under witness protection schemes or victims of domestic violence—so that they are not effectively barred from registering and exercising their right to vote for fear that their details could be traced. The Bill provides for a system of anonymous registration for those whose own safety, or that of another member of their household, could be compromised if their details were published on the electoral roll.
	The Bill says nothing about service voters. This is a very important issue. Concern has been expressed that the ability of service personnel to vote has been reduced as a result of changes introduced in 2000. The Electoral Commission and the Ministry of Defence are working to identify the effect of those changes but I welcome the opportunity the Bill provides to debate whether further legislative change is appropriate now.
	Ensuring that everyone has the right to vote also means ensuring that everyone who is eligible and registered to vote is then able and encouraged to participate. To promote equal access to elections, the Bill requires that all polling places are reviewed over a four-year cycle to ensure they provide proper access to all people. This provision will complement and strengthen existing legislation under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. Noble Lords will be aware of the powerful intervention made by the honourable Member for Aberdeen South, Anne Begg, who described the problems she had going round her constituency during the general election; she herself could not get into many polling stations.
	We are also enabling returning officers to provide guidance for voters in languages other than English and Welsh, and in alternative formats, as recommended by the Electoral Commission.
	The Bill also introduces common-sense measures to help tackle the problem of what the Electoral Commission has termed the "Generation no X"—young people, aged from 18 to 30, many of whom are not registered and have never established the habit of voting. Not voting when you are young is the greatest single indicator that you will not vote as you get older. There are many complex reasons for this lack of engagement, but for some it is the simple fact that they feel they do not know how to vote or that they are in some way "unqualified" to take part. The Bill makes provision to allow parents to take their children into the polling station with them, which will enable parents to show their children how to vote and familiarise them with the habit of voting.
	Participation is not just about who votes; it is also about who can stand at election. The Bill lowers the age for candidacy in all elections from 21 to 18.
	Finally on this aspect, the Bill clarifies the power for returning officers to encourage participation at elections, and it provides for a ring-fenced fund to be established to support their work in this area. It aims to extend the type of local-level, targeted publicity and outreach work that is already undertaken by some local authorities as a matter of best practice, and it will complement the national campaigns already undertaken by the Electoral Commission.
	In addition to introducing this Bill, the Government are continuing to look at ways to modernise our electoral system and to increase the opportunities that people have to vote. To test the effectiveness and robustness of these innovations and to build confidence in them, we are continuing to conduct a programme of pilots in 2006 which maintains the momentum that was started in 2000.
	Earlier today—so that this House could debate it at Second Reading and later in the process—the Government announced that they had accepted 16 applications from local authorities to hold pilots at the May 2006 local elections. A background paper providing further details on the pilots has been placed in the House Library.
	The local authorities will pilot innovations including: voting in alternative locations such as shopping centres and rural locations to allow us further to test how voting in different locations and at different times can enhance access; and electronic counting of ballots, which will build on past work and test how this can be refined to ensure confidence, as well as support future use of technology to gain efficiencies in the administration of elections. The pilot will enable us also to identify how technology can support counting in the different voting systems that are used in local authority and regional elections.
	The pilots will test also some of the measures included in this Bill, such as the use of barcodes and signatures in polling stations to improve security. This will provide valuable lessons for the successful implementation of these measures.
	Falling turn-out at elections and disengagement in democracy are complex issues which cannot be tackled by legislation alone. Above all, what the politicians stand for and the way they engage with the public affect these issues. However, the steps included in this Bill, and the work that we are doing in piloting new ways of voting, provide a valuable and important platform for future improvements.
	I move to the important issues of security and public confidence. People have a choice about how to vote in this country. Whatever their choice, they should have confidence that the system is secure. A democracy desert a place not just where people are not registered and do not vote but where people fear that the system is open to abuse and that their vote will not count.
	Fraud in any area, in any election, undermines public confidence in the integrity of our system. Every person in every community in this country is entitled to be sure that he can cast his own vote and that it will be fairly counted as he casts it; that no one's vote will be stolen and no result perverted by fraud. That is a basic right for all. To protect that individual right and to restore public confidence, we are taking a series of measures to enhance electoral security which include: primary legislation—namely, the measures in this Bill; secondary legislation, which will be debated in the other place on 15 February; on the ground, work at a local level in "at risk" areas; and extra resources for electoral administrators and registration officers. These measures are part of an overall strategy to improve electoral security.
	The Bill creates two new electoral fraud offences: for supplying false information or failing to supply information to the registration officer at any time; and for falsely applying for a postal vote. We are also strengthening the current offence of undue influence to make it easier to prosecute, and toughening up the penalties for both new and existing offences, moving from a fine of £1,000 to one of £5,000 or up to six months' imprisonment.
	In polling stations we will be requiring voters to sign for their ballot paper, to act as a deterrent to fraud. This measure is also going to be piloted in a few authorities at this year's local elections. We are extending the time in which the police can undertake investigations into suspected fraud by up to 12 months.
	We recognise that it is when voting is by post that we need the greatest focus on security. We must enhance the current position. Again, we are tackling this issue through various means. In this Bill, we will require all postal vote literature to include statutory secrecy warnings, underlining the secrecy of the ballot to deter people from attempting to influence another's vote; we will provide for barcodes as well as serial numbers to be included on ballot papers, protecting against the loss or theft of postal ballots and enabling a new ballot paper to be issued to the voter; and we will establish a marked register of postal votes received, similar to that used in the polling station, to help prevent fraud.
	The Electoral Commission also recommended that the existing provisions relating to personation should be extended to give the police the power of arrest, based on "reasonable suspicion" of personation at any location, not just at polling stations. This change to the law is already provided for in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.
	In secondary legislation, we will require administrators to write to everyone who has applied for a postal vote to confirm it. That way, unless someone is living in your house and opening your post, your postal vote application will be secure; we will require voters to give a reason if they want their postal vote to be redirected to a different address from that on the electoral register; we will move forward the deadline for applying for a postal vote, to give electoral administrators more time to check and process applications; we will enable postal ballots handed in at the polling station to be securely collected ahead of the count; and we will make it clear that electoral administrators have the power to check signatures on applications to vote by post. These secondary legislation measures will, if passed, be in effect in time for the May 2006 council elections.
	Also in the Bill, we are providing for local authorities to pilot the collection of individual signatures and dates of birth at registration, to see what benefits such a system could bring. The Electoral Commission recommended individual registration. We appreciate the principles behind this recommendation. However, we must proceed on the basis of solid evidence. We have therefore decided that, rather than going straight to national rollout, we should pilot the system first to see what benefits such a system could bring. We will pilot with an open mind. The Electoral Commission will have a key role to play in supporting and evaluating the pilots. From this evaluation, the decision will be brought back to Parliament.
	If the pilots show that this is the correct way forward, we will roll out individual registration right across the country. Individual registration, as a minimum requiring every member of the household to sign, may reduce further the numbers on the register. If there was such a reduction, would it be justified by the increase in security? We do not know whether and, if so, what size any reduction would be. The benefits for security are that the signature on the register can be compared first with the signature on the application for the postal ballot and then with the signature on the returned ballot paper—three signatures rather than two. The pilots will test the effect on registration and what difference the system of three signatures makes.
	We all agree that we must safeguard the security of our electoral system. We all agree that we need tough anti-fraud measures, more than were in place at the last general election. We are taking such measures, both in the Bill, in regulations, and through other practical, non-legislative steps. Individual registration is a means to an end, so we have committed to testing it, to find out whether it achieves the end that we all want to see.
	The Electoral Commission has raised a third possibility—what it calls a transitional approach. This would give people the option of giving their signature and date of birth on the registration form. If they did not and the head of the household gave their names, they could still vote at the polling station. However, under the Electoral Commission's proposal, signing would allow them to apply for a postal vote. Not signing would not prevent them under this scheme subsequently applying for a postal vote. The Electoral Commission's proposal is that a decision should be made to institute this transitional proposal now. The concerns about it are that it means a more complicated form, which might reduce registration, with only a limited increase in security. The transitional proposal could still allow a person to get a postal vote with only two signatures as protection, which is the current position.
	The Government's position is that this is such a significant matter that we should pilot compulsory individual identifiers, and, on the basis of the material that comes from that, decide whether there should be a national rollout. If the conclusion is that it should, and the Electoral Commission will be involved in the evaluation, we will roll it out. If it is not, we will not. On an issue of this importance, evidence is required.
	We have said that the health of our democracy relies on three things: access to voting for all, participation by all, and security for all. These are the principles at stake. We cannot focus exclusively on any one of these to the detriment of the others. We will not take risks with the security of the vote and we are not willing to take risks with the register or with people's right to vote.
	The next elections will take place in May this year. Officials in my department are already working closely with local authority chief executives, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Electoral Commission electoral administrators and local parties to support the efforts in those wards that are at risk of fraud. In most areas these fears will not be felt, but where there is a history or a particular threat of fraud we will back up those who will be taking action at local level. Underpinning these measures for better access and security, the Bill also includes a number of sensible measures to simplify electoral law and improve the way elections are conducted. Those changes will benefit the political parties, electoral administrators and, most important of all, the voters themselves.
	We recognise that many aspects of our current electoral law and procedure are no longer appropriate for today's environment. In some cases the powers given to returning officers are unclear, and this can lead to inconsistencies in the type of service provided across the country. For this reason the Bill will clarify some of those powers: the power of the returning officer to offer translated guidance for voters; the power to encourage participation at elections; and the power to correct administrative and clerical errors in the run-up to the election and on polling day. These are sensible, practical measures that will play a big part in enabling administrators to respond effectively to voters' needs.
	To help administrators manage their own elections effectively we are simplifying the way that parliamentary elections are funded, reducing micro-management by central government. We are scrapping outdated practices by, for example, removing the need for the stamping instrument to validate the ballot paper, and by allowing for the use of credit and debit card payments for candidates' election deposits. These changes will be supported by new measures to promote best practice and consistency in the provision of electoral services. These include a requirement for administrators to provide data on their electoral spending to the Electoral Commission to establish transparency on costs. This will be the first time that such data are collected centrally, and will be extremely valuable in informing future policy developments in this area.
	Everything in this Bill will be underpinned by provisions for performance standards for electoral services. These standards will help local authorities by setting clear standards for what is expected of them, and will enable the commission to monitor performance and promote best practice. They will be set and monitored by the Electoral Commission following consultation with the Secretary of State.
	The key to improving registration, and to improving security, is to give electoral administrators the powers, duties and resources they need to carry out their greater responsibilities and exercise their wider powers. The Government have allocated £21.1 million per annum to local authorities in England and Wales to fund the measures in the Bill and the accompanying package of secondary legislation. Scotland has around £2.9 million in Barnett consequentials for the implementation of these measures in Scotland.
	The political parties play a vital role in engaging people in our democracy. Legislation introduced by this Government in 2000 has also ensured greater transparency around the work and financial accounts of parties. This Bill includes measures to simplify the regulatory framework for parties established by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. In making these changes it will ease the regulatory burden on parties, while ensuring that the chief virtues of the system—openness and transparency in the financial affairs of political parties—will not be lost or diluted.
	I have discussed in detail the key provisions of the Bill. I do not think that I need to summarise the effect of every part of it. The Bill is about improving access to democracy, promoting participation and enhancing security. We approach the Bill as we did in the Commons—keen to address issues in a cross-party way and, above all, keen to improve participation, security and democracy and increase the confidence of all in our electoral system. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Falconer of Thoroton.)

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for introducing the Bill in the detailed way that he did. I am sorry that he may not be able to stay until the end of the debate. We understand that he has other duties, and are grateful that we still have a Lord Chancellor able to undertake those duties.
	Much of the Bill arises as a direct result of concerns that arose from the pilots on all-postal voting, the security of the vote in those circumstances and a continuing desire to ensure that those entitled to vote do so. The now notorious attempts at vote rigging in Birmingham on an all-postal vote were the most blatant example of what can happen if there is no secure system of ensuring that votes can be—

Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I do not think that I mentioned all-postal balloting; I mentioned vote-rigging. I beg the noble and learned Lord's pardon, I did mention all-postal voting. As I say, the notorious attempts at vote-rigging in Birmingham on an all-postal vote were the most blatant example of what can happen if there is no secure system of ensuring that votes can be delivered to the electoral registration officer except through the tried-and-tested means of the personal vote at the polling station.
	In its publication Securing the Vote, which followed directly from that fiasco, the Electoral Commission made clear its view that all-postal voting should not be pursued for use at,
	"future statutory elections or referendums in the United Kingdom".
	In the same report it made a number of recommendations for changes to the process of registering to vote, voting by post and voting in person at a polling station. About 80 per cent of the commission's recommendations have been incorporated in this Bill, but not all.
	We welcome the Bill in the following respects. It actively encourages participation in elections through its proposals to add powers for electoral registration officers to encourage electors to participate in the electoral process. It allows electors to register after an election has been called—as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said—up to 11 days before election day. It lowers the candidacy age to 18 to encourage young people's participation in politics. It goes some way to address the problem of fraud by introducing new offences, which the noble and learned Lord outlined, of providing false information about registration, applying for a postal vote or a proxy vote with the intention to steal a vote—an offence whether or not a false vote is achieved—and increasing the time the police can investigate electoral fraud.
	The use of candidates' common names on the ballot paper is a welcome change, as is the move to allow candidates to pay their deposit by credit or debit card. But the Bill does not go far enough in some respects and causes great concern in others. Let us start with the latest of the Government's thoughts on universal registration on computer systems—the co-ordinated on-line record of electors (CORE). While this might seem innocuous at first sight, it is becoming increasingly apparent that centralised information systems are a serious worry, particularly as they could give rise to the Government utilising such information for purposes additional to that for which a registration is carried out, especially in the light of the recent debate on identity cards and the national identity register, with which—if either can be made to work—they could presumably be made to link. It also gives rise to security vulnerability.
	The Bill provides very little idea of what shape and form the CORE database will take. The Bill makes provision for the protection of the data on the CORE system, and the Data Protection Act is involved. But, by definition, criminals do not abide by the law. Prohibiting data-sharing between electoral registration officers may discourage corrupt practices, which are not entirely unknown among electoral officers, but to put online details of every registered voter in the country would be to present identity thieves and fraudsters with a grand challenge, even if the Freedom of Information Act does not cough up the information, if sought. Furthermore, the provisions to prevent "function creep" are subject to the wide order-making powers of the Secretary of State. We are pleased that the orders are subject to affirmative resolution, but we would be far happier if the specific plans for the CORE computer schemes were described in the Bill. Have the Government given enough thought to the set-up prior to the publication of the Bill? I would be interested to hear the Minister's views on the security of the system.
	Almost more important is whether people will have a say about whether they wish to be on the online register. In the light of the recent revelations that the DVLA has been selling information from its register, it would take a seriously dedicated voter to sign up to this system of online registration. The Government claim to want to encourage more and younger people to vote, and we have welcomed the measures that they have taken so far in the Bill, but I cannot think of anything that would be more off-putting to voters than to be told that in order to vote their name must be added to a computerised online register.
	The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred to the matter of individual registration of members of a household. The question of the identity of those voting came into focus as a result of concerns over postal voting and the ability of electoral registration officers to be reasonably confident that the vote returned had been completed by the person to whom it had been sent. The Electoral Commission researched this matter and came to the conclusion that the most satisfactory solution would be for every member of the household to complete a registration form individually, providing a surety of a supporting identifier; a signature at the least or a signature and date of birth. That is included under Part 3, but under Clauses 15 to 17 it is included only after an application for a pilot has been made in an electoral area by a local authority. By that definition, it could be years before individual registration and identifiers became generally applied. The Electoral Commission wishes to see at least a transitional national scheme whereby identifiers are mandatory for those requiring postal or proxy votes. We support that, and we will be moving amendments to that effect.
	The Opposition has been calling for individual registration, supported by effective identifiers, since the Bill was published and during its passage in the other place. It proposed that personal identifiers should include signature, date of birth and National Insurance number, as already required in Northern Ireland. Fears that requiring a National Insurance number as a personal identifier would discourage electors from registering have not proved to be founded. The scheme has been a great success in Northern Ireland, where 92 per cent of those on the census still registered. We appreciate that there are concerns that people may be reluctant to fill in the registration form individually and that there may be a resulting drop in the registered electorate, but that will be a matter for electoral registration officers to address, particularly as part of their remit will be to ensure that the register is made up of bona fide electors, something which cannot be guaranteed under the current arrangements of household registration, which includes someone signing up people in houses in multiple occupation.
	Regrettably, the Bill does not preclude the possible use of all-postal voting, which was widely discredited during the pilots, and we had many discussions on it in this House. The Electoral Commission believes that it should not be pursued for use at future elections, and we support that view. The Bill strangely fails to reinstate the special provision for postal voting for those in the Services. I am glad that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has said that this matter will be discussed and considered. It was debated at length in the other place and the Government appeared to suggest that they might move appropriate amendments at this stage to rectify that, and to restore the armed services personnel scheme that existed before the 2000 Act. I understand from what the Minister said that those amendments will not be laid and we will, therefore, have to nudge that part of the Bill into existence for discussion. We put down those amendments because the tragedy of this matter is that the Government were warned repeatedly in advance of the last election that the consequence of the 2000 legislation was that the Armed Forces would be disenfranchised. In practice, at the last election, they were; this House has held many debates on that matter and it must not be allowed to happen again.
	We welcome the simplification of the declaration of donations. It makes sense that Members of Parliament will now make declarations only to the House and not to the Electoral Commission as well. But we believe that proposals to assess election expenses retrospectively from an arbitrary date four months prior to the election are not only unworkable, but would put serious pressure on already hard-pressed constituency party workers and agents. How, in any event, can anyone know when a general election is to be held—after all, we recently had one after only three years—so that a record is kept of any literature or material published, or so that it is limited in a way appropriate to expenses? This is a nonsense that must be changed.
	Finally, no amount of changes to electoral administration can get over the fact that constituency boundaries are a mess. The number of electors in constituencies in the UK ranges from 21,000 to 107,000. In Labour seats the average number of voters is 67,562, and in Conservative seats, 72,985. According to the Boundary Commission guidelines, Wales has eight too many seats and Scotland two. There are three boundary commissions in the UK and the last boundary review was conducted in 2000; but those findings will be implemented only in the 2009-10 election and population changes will have been drastic during that time, so that, whatever happens, there will still be significant discrepancies. It is all very well for the Government to claim to want to improve voter participation, but the electoral system is not adequately supported by constituency boundaries. This Bill does nothing to address those problems; it may not be capable of doing so, but while we are talking of elections, it is worth putting that on record.
	There is, however, a good deal to talk about within the Bill. I have outlined some of the major areas of concern and my noble friend Lady Seccombe will outline others; but there are other areas, such as the role and responsibilities of electoral registration officers, which we will also want to address in Committee. I look forward to those discussions, so that the Bill, which already covers a number of important changes to the administration of elections, is as near as possible 100 per cent perfect.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Lords, from these Benches we welcome the opportunity to debate the Bill. There is much in it that we can support, particularly the anti-fraud measures on the provision of false information and fraudulent applications for postal and proxy votes. Because we share with the Government the aspiration that registration be as straightforward as possible, we will support measures that bring that about, provided that in our judgment they do nothing to impede the integrity of the ballot. We will oppose anything that compromises the way that our ballot is run.
	I have serious concerns about today's announcement about changes to the voting system for the next elections. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord is genuine in his desire for those issues to be debated in your Lordships' House as part of this Bill, but those elections are only 10 weeks away. The preparations will have already started and will continue apace. Frankly, any debate that we have on the Bill in this House concerning the principle and the technical issues raised by these provisions will be too late.
	We are told that we will be able to vote at the post office or, indeed, at Tesco, which is probably just as well because these days you are more likely to find a Tesco open than a post office. I gather that we will be able to vote by text or computer. We are talking about reducing democracy to the level of "Strictly Come Dancing" or "Big Brother". That is a travesty which suggests that the Government have learnt nothing from the postal ballot trials. On my way here I reflected that, in the case of "Big Brother", as the public threw George Galloway out they showed more discernment than his electorate, but perhaps I should gloss over that.
	My noble friend Lord Greaves will return to this topic in his own inimitable way and will take it further. At this stage, in terms of the integrity of the ballot and so on, I pay particular tribute to the work of the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Reform Society, which do so much in recommending frameworks to establish a balance between maximising participation and maintaining the integrity of the ballot.
	It is always tempting to say that ever-reducing turnout is to do with technical issues, the electoral roll or convenient hours and places of voting, but that is much exaggerated. The evidence shows that, above all, two things are important in influencing turnout. The first is the salience of the election to the voter. General elections see much higher turnouts than by-elections or local government polls. The successive emasculation of local government and its institutions has seen a reduction in turnout, which is almost inevitable. The second point is the extent to which people think that their vote will count in their area. With the inevitable attention given to the minority of seats which change hands, voters in other areas simply feel that they do not matter. That is one reason why on these Benches we have always supported a system of fair voting, in which how you vote is what matters rather than where you vote.
	We also need to recognise that, in some communities in this country, the concept of the vote as something private and non-transferable is not entirely recognised. It is a great problem in areas with low levels of functional literacy. These points were made very strongly in the aftermath of the Birmingham case last year. It is not a new problem that we have had to grapple with in this country; I know of veteran party canvassers who, in the not too distant past, have been told by farm workers that they had to vote the same way as the landowner. That tells us that cultures and attitudes change over time, so there is a huge educational role for local authorities and community groups working together.
	We support the provision of a locally managed, centrally co-ordinated electronic electoral register, and see it particularly as a useful step towards giving voters the option of voting wherever they happen to be on polling day. It is useful for people away at work or for those who simply turn up at the wrong polling station.
	It is a matter of concern that some 3.5 to 4 million people are not registered. Therefore, we strongly support changing the date for registration so that the register no longer closes before an election is announced. As the noble and learned Lord said, many people do not think about it until the election is called and then it is too late. We would like to see the opportunity for a national information campaign about the need to be registered using all the media—local, national and regional. Perhaps we also need some changes to the freepost rules to ensure that late entrants still receive freepost literature.
	We share the regret of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that the Government have not moved towards individual rather than household registration. In this day and age of very varied domestic arrangements, that seems extraordinarily out of tune with modern life. Individual registration is supported by the Electoral Commission, the Electoral Reform Society and the Local Government Association, among others. The Government have made tentative steps towards this provision in pilot schemes, although the scope and the timing are very unclear. We would prefer not to see pilot schemes. We believe that the case has already been made and that pilot schemes can only delay the national rollout. However, if we have pilots, we wish to see them carried out on a sufficiently large scale to ensure that proper evaluation takes place with a sufficiently large evidence base. I ask the Government to be aware that one problem with pilot schemes is that it is often the authorities that are already best which volunteer to take part in them.
	We welcome the system for regular review of polling stations and district boundaries. However, as a matter of practicality, we would like to see a moratorium on doing this within three months of a fixed election polling day. That is because the republication of a revised register close to an election causes all sorts of logistical difficulties for all the political parties who need to use the register.
	We strongly support changes in the rules that will allow translation into other languages and assistance for postal voters. Those points are also raised by the Disability Rights Commission and I expect the noble Lord, Lord Rix, will have more to say on that. In its Right to Vote campaign, the DRC highlights the particular difficulties faced by people with learning disabilities.
	We also welcome the reduction in the age of candidature from 21 to 18. However, the Bill appears to come up with different dates for different elections as regards the day on which someone's birthday has to fall. We may have to discuss that in Committee and perhaps agree that the same polling date should be used across the board.
	We welcome the use of common names. During the 14 years when I was a local government candidate, people would often say to me, "I didn't know you were called Rosalind". They only saw that name when they came to the polling booth. The only person who ever called me Rosalind was my mother and I am not sure she ever voted for me. I wonder whether we should have a system which would enable agents to proofread ballot papers. I realise the time constraint, but we have received—as I am sure other parties have—many complaints from agents about mistakes on ballot papers, which is probably due to the pressure on authorities.
	On the concern about election expense returns, there are worries that the Electoral Commission is going overboard and demanding an unnecessary level of detail. We would like to see that power used in a proportionate way and some simplification in the way in which the commission carries out its business. We share with the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, some very serious worries about changes to start election expenses four months from polling day. That is not a problem for fixed elections, but for general elections that will present parties and their agents with some very difficult practical problems. The danger is that the uncertainty will mean that parties go back to the old system under which candidates were not formally selected until the election was announced, returning us to the nonsense of the prospective candidate or Westminster spokesman, and the late lamented adoption meeting.
	We support the creation of formal standards in performance for electoral services, as there is such a wide variation in the capacity of local authorities to deliver uniformly and consistently. However, the Government must recognise the tension between pushing the time scales for registration and postal voting ever closer to the election date, and the need for officers to be able to work under pressure. We need to obviate the danger of error and corner-cutting.
	Some matters are not in the Bill, but we would like to find time to discuss them. We believe that changes to the rules governing the details of freepost election addresses are now overdue. Currently, the rules appear to be drawn up unilaterally by the Royal Mail and, while we have no problem with it dealing with technical details, we question whether the Royal Mail should make decisions about whether leaflets should contain requests for donations. That should be a matter for the Electoral Commission, after consultation with parties. My noble friend Lord Garden will talk about the particular problems experienced by service voters.
	On these Benches, we have a long-standing commitment to bringing in votes at 16; 108 Members of Parliament from eight parties signed an Early-Day Motion on that in another place. At 16 and 17 people can work—650,000 do; they pay taxes; they get married; and 61,000 of them are the main carer of a sick or disabled relative. It cannot be right to deny the franchise to this group of people. Most of the arguments against giving young people the vote are exactly the same as those used in the past two centuries for opposing the vote for working men and then for women. I look forward to the Grand Committee on the Bill.

Baroness Gale: My Lords, I very much welcome the Bill. I hope that it will help to increase participation and make the integrity of the vote more robust.
	I believe that the Minister is aware of the report prepared by the Local Government and Public Services Committee of the Welsh Assembly, which has been scrutinising the Bill. It lists a number of concerns. One is the co-ordinated online registration of electors. Other noble Lords have mentioned that. The committee states that the register of electors in Wales is available in both English and Welsh, as it is a document available to the public in Wales. The Electoral Commission's Welsh language scheme commits the commission to equal treatment of Welsh and English in Wales. The committee's view is that, as it is likely that the Electoral Commission will be the keepers of the CORE scheme, its commitment to the Welsh language should be extended to that scheme in Wales.
	It would be rather strange if the commitment of equal treatment of both languages were not reflected in the Bill. It seems that the policy with the Welsh language has been overlooked, although I was very pleased to hear my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor mention the Welsh language in his opening remarks. I am sure that there will be an opportunity to correct this anomaly, if that is what it is, by amendments in Committee. I look forward to the Minister's response on the matter.
	I welcome the new methods of paying the deposit, when submitting nomination papers, by credit card, debit card or electronic transfer of funds, rather than the traditional method of cash or banker's draft. But how many local parties would possess such cards? From my own experience of local Labour parties, I cannot think of one that has such facilities available to it. But this is not to decry the attempt in the Bill to modernise our approach to the conduct of elections—and if the local parties did not possess such a card, maybe the election agent could use his own credit or debit card and live in hope that he would be reimbursed by his political party.
	I welcome the proposals to bring the age to stand as a candidate down from 21 to 18, although, when I first read it, I could not imagine why an 18 year-old would want to become a Member of Parliament. Of course there would be young people aged between 18 and 21 who might want to stand for election to their local council, parish or community council. Many young people are active in their local communities and would, I hope, be prepared to serve the community in this manner—and would it not be good to see these youthful faces on our local councils?
	That naturally leads me to another aspect of the Bill—those eligible to attend the count. Paragraph 75 of Schedule 1 lists the people who are eligible to attend the count. Sub-paragraph (2) (b) specifies,
	"the candidates and their spouses or civil partners".
	As this Bill hopes to modernise our approach to elections, I was surprised to see that restriction. As it will allow people from the age of 18 to be candidates, why can we not say that the candidate can be accompanied by a person of his or her choice? Unless the candidate is married or has a civil partner, that candidate cannot have a companion with him or her. In today's society many couples choose not to marry. According to the Bill the candidate would not be able to bring his or her partner to the count, or, for example, a divorced person could not have a daughter or son with him or her. An 18 year-old who is neither married nor in a civil partnership may want a mother, father, brothers, sisters or close friends with him at the count to give moral support while awaiting the result.
	Surely these days we should not regard spouses or civil partners as the only persons who can accompany a candidate, especially with the proposal to have younger candidates. This measure discriminates against single people. I am aware that returning officers have the discretion to permit others to attend, provided the efficient counting of votes is not impeded. But, on this point, that would be insufficient. The rights of single people to have the person of their choice should be in the Bill. I hope that my noble friend will have a good look at that matter and use this as an opportunity to allow candidates to choose whom they want to have with them at the count.
	Clause 15 deals with pilot schemes, and will allow local authorities to apply to run personal identifier pilot schemes. Subsection (3) states:
	"The Secretary of State must not make a pilot order unless he first consults the Electoral Commission".
	Subsection (10) gives the definition of a local authority; subsection (10) (b) states that it is:
	"In Wales, a county council or county borough council".
	As local government is a devolved matter, should not the devolution settlement be recognised here? Where a Welsh local authority applies to run such a scheme, should not the National Assembly for Wales, rather than the Secretary of State, be responsible for making a pilot order? I trust that the Minister can explain that anomaly, if that is what it is.
	Banning candidates from standing in more than one constituency is a good measure. It is an abuse of our democracy when candidates can offer themselves to more than one constituency. To give an example, a candidate—Catherine Taylor-Dawson, who stood on the Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket—stood in four Cardiff constituencies in 2005. In Cardiff Central, she got 37 votes. In Cardiff South and Penarth, she got 79 votes. In Cardiff West, she got 167 votes. But in Cardiff North, she got one vote, and she says that she did not vote for herself. As she is a singer, I assume that she received quite a lot of publicity. She said that she did not make speeches; she sang and played her guitar. Her main sponsor was Rainbow George, who donated £2,000 to her campaign. He stood in 13 constituencies. There is something to think about there.
	I support the Bill. It contains many good and practical measures that will assist in the smooth running of our elections. Those measures include allowing returning officers the right to make minor amendments to nomination papers. I am sure that all election agents will very much welcome that. I know that when I used to take nomination papers along, however many times I checked, my heart was in my mouth hoping that there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. If there was, you were sent back—as those who used to do this work will recognise.
	Increasing time limits for the payment of election expenditure; a framework for local authorities to review polling places over a four-year period; and allowing observers and children to accompany voters to the polling station are just some of the good measures in the Bill. I look forward to taking part in debate on the Bill during its journey through the House.

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Gale. Although only half of my blood is Welsh, it enables me to say that I hope she derived as much satisfaction from yesterday's rugby international as I did.
	Our normal patois would tempt one to describe today's Bill as a curate's egg. Because it has inevitably a regulatory flavour, I shall call it an archdeacon's egg. There is a whole series of provisions that the Electoral Commission welcomes. I approve so strongly of the Electoral Commission as an instrument for the greater good—I remark parenthetically that I only wish that the Government had not held it back from their original legislative programme until they had conducted a series of referendums under varying rules of their own choosing—that I, too, welcome those provisions.
	On the central issues of postal voting on demand and fraud, I have been much more sceptical of the Government's modus operandi. Therefore, I would be hypocritical if I did not welcome the questioning nature of the Electoral Commission's response to Clauses 15 to 17 in its briefing to your Lordships' House, including its expression of an alternative option to which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor referred.
	Of course I recognise the Government's concern about falling polls. In 1983, after boundary changes, the percentage poll in my former constituency of the City of London and Westminster, South was the lowest in the country at 52 per cent. I told my agent, who is still the agent for the constituency and therefore has seven parliaments' worth of experience of this very inner-city seat, that we must at the next election lift ourselves off the bottom, if only by a single constituency. But in the event, in the next three elections we moved ourselves almost 25 per cent up in the polling, and two dozen places off the bottom, generally passing other inner-city seats, mainly in London, and over several Northern Ireland seats. So I am familiar with transient and undiscoverable electorates. Anyone who has canvassed in central London is necessarily admiring of London's postmen.
	The Government, mainly through the Deputy Prime Minister's obsession with all-postal voting pilots in areas where he wished to hold regional referendums, may have raised the level of polling—although I would not have gone as far as the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, once did in saying during one of the subsequent rows in your Lordships' House that the Government had made it possible for more people to vote who could not vote before; it had always been my impression that they had the ability to vote before—but they also raised the level of fraud. That said, I felt genuine sympathy for the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, who had to defend the outcome of their initiatives in the form they took, as expressed in levels of fraud, especially when the Queen's Counsel who conducted the vote-rigging trial in Birmingham, commenting on a government statement to the effect that the current system was "working", opined in reply:
	"Short of writing 'STEAL ME' on the envelopes, it is hard to see what more could be done to ensure their coming into the wrong hands".
	It was in the aftermath of that episode that Peers on the government Benches in your Lordships' House—no names, no pack drill, but Hansard identifies them—said that the events in Birmingham had nothing to do with the Government, despite the defendants in the case being Labour Party councillors. Of course I recognise that the Labour Party is subject to the law of the land, just like any other party, but unless members of the government party are candidates for sainthood, they do have an interest and an influence in what the legislation says. I recognise the traditional problems in these matters of Chinese walls, but saying that what happened in Birmingham had nothing to do with the Government implies that what separated the Government from the Labour Party in that instance was as monumental as the Great Wall of China itself.
	In 2002, your Lordships' House examined the Northern Ireland electoral practices Bill. The Government had not found themselves ready to amend the Bill in the Commons, although I am genuinely delighted that the Parliamentary Secretary in charge of the Bill when in the Commons is now in the Cabinet as Chief Secretary. We had a spirited debate in your Lordships' House at Second Reading, a debate into which I introduced Winston Churchill's post-First World War quotation about,
	"the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone"—
	the very counties where, in the 2001 general election, there had been the loudest accusations of electoral fraud.
	To the immense credit of the late Lord Williams of Mostyn, then Leader of your Lordships' House, in whose charge the Bill was here, the Government rewrote the Bill in your Lordships' House, making massive improvements in fraud prevention to the extent that such accusations of fraud are far rarer now in the Province. We shall attend to the wider aspects of that achievement in Committee. It is because the Government are not prepared to do anything remotely similar in this Bill after the Electoral Commission in 2004 revised its views about all-postal voting, following the experiences of that summer, that we must regard this Bill as an archdeacon's egg. I gather that it is going into Grand Committee, which seems odd given the criterion of controversy and the fact that there is time for the National Lottery Bill to be taken in the Chamber. But there will be a great deal to discuss.
	If it is true that the Birmingham saga may run to a third election, we are back to the serial elections which, if not for the same reasons, are reminiscent of John Wilkes in Middlesex in the 18th century. To echo one of the greater effusions of that ubiquitous poet Anon:
	"As I was going up the stair
	I met a man who wasn't there.
	He wasn't there again today
	I wish to God he'd go away".
	In Committee and at Report, we must seek to ensure that he does.
	It is important for the Minister to say whether, under the Government's proposals, there would be sufficient margin of time to introduce full individual registration within this Parliament if all went well. Incidentally, although the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said that election staff would have the resources necessary to do the work needed, I would feel easier if the Electoral Commission decided what resources were needed rather than Her Majesty's Government. Birmingham City Council has been eloquent about the strain that its staff have been under. Are the amounts that the Lord Chancellor quoted incremental or absolute? Whichever the case, how does the new total compare with present provision?
	My final point is smaller, but events may make it larger. At a moment when the Government seem to forget golden rules about not fighting on two fronts at once—in this instance, a fortiori, they are golden-plated golden rules because one of the fronts is Afghanistan—we shall also need to give attention to the Government's case for the present system of service voter registration, to which reference has already been made. All in all, there is much to look forward to. I hope that the Minister in charge of the Bill, whoever in the end he or she is, is luckier than the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, was.

Lord Garden: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said in his opening speech that service voting, which has just been addressed again, is absent from the Bill. Both Front Benches have also drawn attention to the need to do something on that important issue. We are talking about a quarter of a million of our citizens whose voting rights have been adversely affected in recent years. When the Bill was debated in the other place, the Minister, Harriet Harman, after thanking Members of the House for highlighting the issue of service voters and their under-registration, said:
	"I look forward to further debate on that in another place".—[Official Report, Commons; 11/1/06; col. 387.]
	Looking at the list of speakers, I think that I am probably that "further debate" for today.
	I have been involved in this issue on a cross-party basis since I arrived in your Lordships' House in 2004. Despite warnings of the cumulative effects of the change caused to service voter registration by the Representation of the People Act 2000, the Government at that stage were reluctant to acknowledge that there was a problem, and too little was done too late for the May 2005 election. I shall try to bring your Lordships up to date with what has happened after the election and the work that has been done between the Minister's department, the Ministry of Defence, interested parliamentarians, electoral registration officers and unofficial representatives of the services.
	It is important to remember that when absent voting—both postal and proxy—was first introduced in 1918, it was primarily for servicemen serving overseas. Similar arrangements were made at the end of World War 2. Postal voting was not extended to civilians until 1948. Until 2001, all service personnel had to register as service voters. Once a person had registered, that registration remained effective until he or she changed to a different address or left the Armed Forces. Their dependants could also use the scheme if they so wished.
	Following the 2000 Act, service personnel and their families have had to register annually. The central register that looked after who was on the electoral register from the services was then closed. As a result, no one knows how many service people and their dependants fell off voting registers as the years passed and they moved from posting to posting. Electoral registration officers have reported how difficult it is to obtain access at some units despite the Ministry of Defence's view that they should have such access. They are not able to check even whether they are getting registration information at unit level.
	I shall not repeat to your Lordships the sorry tale of the lack of urgency by the Ministry of Defence in the run-up to the May 2005 general election. I spoke in detail about that on 26 May 2005 during the debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, on the workings of the 2005 election. Since then we seem to have had a welcome recognition by the Government that there is a real problem to be solved. I have attended two meetings with Ministers, for which I thank the noble Baroness and her department.
	The first meeting was chaired by Harriet Harman, the Minister of State at the DCA on 2 November 2005. The Ministry of Defence was represented by Don Touhig, the Defence Minister. Sam Younger, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, was also there. On 11 January 2006 we had a second meeting, chaired on that occasion by the Electoral Commission. Again the DCA Minister was present along with officials from the Ministry of Defence, but not the Minister. We also had representatives from electoral registration officers. I should particularly like to commend Douglas Young, who also attended. He is the author of an excellent piece of research into the problem entitled Silence in the Ranks.
	From all these meetings, I am convinced that the DCA wishes to achieve a solution to the problem that has arisen as a result of the 2000 legislation. Harriet Harman has spoken of "zero tolerance" in the area of voter registration. Yet there does not appear to be a clear consensus on how best to tackle the issue. Some have argued the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, in her contribution—that we could return to the pre-2000 position. We could go back to the previous system where service voter registration lasted for someone's service life. It is the "better than nothing" option which some have described as at least a move forward, although in fact it is a move backward. It may be that it is the best we can do, but it would be unfortunate if that were the case. We need to seize the opportunity to make both registration and voting easy for service personnel and their dependants.
	The Ministry of Defence must have a role in this. But when we talk to MoD officials at these meetings, it is clear that there is a great reluctance to take on specific responsibilities, particularly if they have resource implications. Nevertheless the department has undertaken some initiatives which I warmly welcome. The Secretary of State for Defence, Dr John Reid, wrote to me on 15 September 2005 outlining a number of moves. It has been made a requirement for each unit to have an officer responsible for voting issues. Payslips are now being used to convey messages about registration, something which might have been done before the May 2005 election. A survey has been put in hand to try to discover the scale of the problem. I was interested to hear the detailed statistics from the Lord Chancellor covering every possible decimal point on who voted, who is registered and so forth—and yet no one knows about service voters. That is very odd. The survey now being conducted by the Ministry of Defence is a postal survey which requires those selected to return their forms voluntarily. Cynics have suggested that this may distort the outcome of the survey a little towards those inclined to fill in forms and return them, and they may well be the people who tend to register to vote. In any case, the results will not be available until next month.
	All these measures are helpful, but the reluctance of the MoD to take on a more proactive role is unfortunate. It deploys and posts troops, thus making it difficult for them to register and vote, yet it wants to act as though it is a normal employer. The department could take on the administration of the registration, and it must take on the mechanics of the voting process. For the mechanics of voting are just as important as the registration process. Whatever registration improvement we manage to get by amendment when the Bill is considered in Committee, we will still have the problem of how to make it possible for all deployed service personnel and their dependants when deployed to be sure that they will receive ballot papers in time for them to be returned.
	During the May 2005 general election it was not just distant postings in Iraq and Afghanistan that proved impossible, there were reports of problems in Germany and Northern Ireland caused by mail delays over the bank holiday weekend. Nor should we accept the argument that it is the servicemen's fault because they can always opt for a proxy vote. Not only is a proxy vote sometimes difficult to organise, in my view it is not democratic. We have a duty to make it possible for all service people to cast a secret personal vote. That means that the Ministry of Defence will have to provide the necessary logistics.
	There are other issues which we shall address in Committee. The banning of canvassing on military units is out of date and is now much more restricting given that many barrack blocks and married quarters are within the widened defined secure area. Electoral registration officers need to think more about the needs of the service voter, and they need to establish a much closer relationship with their own military units. We need also to look at how the service voter can decide what their address is for registration purposes. The advice currently available is confusing and often contradictory.
	The main issue remains that, nearly a year after the general election, we are still searching for ways to repair the damage of the 2000 Act. I am not at this stage attempting to detail the amendment that we will need to make to the Bill. We considered a number of options at our last meeting with the Electoral Commission. A participant suggested an amendment giving delegated powers to amend service voting arrangements later when we have seen how the MoD's new measures work. I hope that we will be able to come up with something more concrete than that. As a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Select Committee, I should say that we are never very enthusiastic about lack of policy thinking being an excuse for delegated legislation.
	I agree with those who have said that the best must not be the enemy of the good. We need to produce a workable scheme and I look forward to hearing what the Minister proposes we should do to meet her department's undertaking to right this wrong. I hope we can all work together, on a cross-party basis, to rectify this important problem.

Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, I want to address two narrow areas of the Bill. Before doing so, I congratulate the Government on bringing forward a measure that I believe is extremely important. I also pay tribute to those Members of this House, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and others on his Benches, who have pressed for this legislation for a long time.
	The particular areas that I want to deal with are, first, Clause 9 and the duties placed on local authorities, and secondly, the issues raised in Clause 14 on individual identifiers and in Clauses 15, 16 and 17 on pilots.
	In Clause 9, I think that we have come up with an arrangement that will crack the problem of under-registration nationally. As a way forward, local registration officers should look to subsections (2)(c) and (d). Subsection (2)(c) refers to,
	"making contact by any such other means as the registration officer thinks appropriate with persons who do not have an entry in a register".
	Subsection (2)(d) refers to,
	"inspecting any records held by any person which he is permitted to inspect under or by virtue of any enactment or rule of law".
	The Secretary of State has also retained the right to amend further those duties under subsection (3)(a), (b) and (c) by varying, inserting or repealing any paragraphs. The powers under Clause 9 are sufficient to deal with what I can only regard as a major problem nationally of under-registration, which certainly surfaced during the previous general election.
	However, I have immense reservations about Clauses 15, 16, 17 and 18. I say to my noble friend that we should think again about those. She will know that I have been speaking about these issues to Ministers from this department in the House of Commons, and I do not want to go into great detail this evening on what my recommendations have been, if I might modestly put it that way.
	However, there is overwhelming hostility throughout the system to the idea of pilots. There is hostility in the Electoral Commission. Sam Younger has told those of us whom he has met that he is hostile to the pilots. There is hostility within the Liberal Democrat Party, as expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, during the debate. There is immense hostility within the Labour Party. We need not go into the reasons today, but I think that Members of the House will not find it too difficult to estimate what those reservations are about. Those concerns need to be revisited.
	Noble Lords will forgive me for standing in the Aisle. I was rebuked for it last week, but a medical condition requires me to move around on my feet. One area of the pilots worries me in particular. Paragraphs 98 to 100 of the Explanatory Notes, relating to Clause 16, state that the Electoral Commission will have to evaluate the success of those pilots in around 2008. The criteria for evaluation are set out in the legislation. The Explanatory Notes state,
	"such an evaluation . . . must use or apply any methodology, data or criteria that may be specified in the pilot order".
	The problem is that this body, which every Member of the House will recognise as independent, has already committed itself completely to the principle of national rollout. Evidence of that is set out in the commission's briefing to this House of 6 February, which states:
	"We remain concerned however that the Bill does not make provision for full individual registration to replace the outdated household registration system, which is open to abuse and error. Individual registration is both desirable in principle and vital as a means of underpinning the security of postal voting. It would allow voters to participate with confidence in the electoral process".
	In its briefing for today's debate, the Electoral Reform Society states:
	"We believe that the Bill should be amended so as to move immediately to the collection and use of personal identifiers in the whole country, rather than an initial piloting stage. We believe that the case has been made for this to happen and that failure to do so may lead to more fraud tainted elections".
	It is absolutely committed. We are placing the Electoral Commission in an impossible position. How can it objectively evaluate these pilots and perhaps even recommend that they come to an end? It cannot possibly suggest or recommend the winding-up of a system because it is committed to national rollout. It is being placed in an impossible position. I do not know whether that is part of the reason for its opposition to pilots. It tells us that it simply wants to go to national registration now, and we have to believe what it says, but it might be concerned that it will be placed in a position of having to challenge the national rollout arrangements that it suggests in its oral and written briefings to Members both of the House of Commons and of this House. I ask the Minister to think through the consequences before we go down this route.
	We do not know whether it will be this Parliament, or indeed this Government, that will deal with the recommendations of the Electoral Commission. It might need time to evaluate the pilots, because it will not be reporting on them before 2008. Therefore, this process might be outside our influence. I am worried that the wrong decision will ultimately be taken.
	It is with this in mind that I have today tabled some amendments which would establish a completely different arrangement for dealing with this problem. I know that in principle parts of my amendments will carry the support of Liberal Democrat Members because they have already addressed some of the issues that I seek to raise. On Report in the House of Commons, David Heath tabled a very interesting amendment based on briefing given to him. He wrote the amendments himself, although he is not a lawyer; his amendments had to be tidied up, but he tried his best. But his amendment on the transitional arrangement, which in my amendment I do not necessarily regard as transitional, forms a small part of my amendment, which sets the matter in a wider context.
	My amendments will be on the Marshalled List tomorrow. I hope that my noble friend will not simply reject them today. I do not intend to press them to a vote at any stage, in Committee or on Report; I simply want the Government to think through whether they provide for a better system of dealing with a problem that exists only in isolated parts of the United Kingdom. My argument is that we do not have to roll the system out nationwide. This is not a nationwide problem. It can be dealt with completely differently. I hope that my noble friend can treat these matters as I suggest, as objectively as possible in the circumstances.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, once again we have the interesting paradox of the unelected House of Lords talking about elections—and no doubt we will talk about elections in great detail in relation to the Bill. As a Liberal Democrat, I must say that it has been a good week for elections, so I should not complain.
	I have been involved in different elections—I have tried to tot it up—at least 20 times in my life. The number of times that I have been an agent for candidates goes well into the hundreds. Following on from the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, I look forward to being able for the first time—the next time I am on the ballot paper—to use the name "Tony" instead of the name that my mother, and nobody else, calls me. The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, said that she used to be involved in these things, and I thought, "Lucky her that she used to do them—some of us are still in the thick of it".
	This Bill includes a lot of absolutely fascinating detail. I am sure that many other noble Lords will think that we are all anoraks for talking about it in such detail. But it also includes a number of major issues of principle, one of which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has been talking about. I thank him for his kind words.
	When we talked about postal voting under the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill two years ago, I felt when we started that I was to some extent a voice in the wilderness. I talked about the abuses that absent voting can lead to—and, in the experience of some of us, had led to. I very much welcome the fact that the Government now accept that there is a problem and are taking some important steps towards stopping it and doing something about it. They have not got it completely perfect, but the fact that they are now regarding this as a major problem is a huge step forward.
	I welcome a great deal of what is in the Bill on postal voting. To a large extent, those measures are the result of the Birmingham case, which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, talked about. The judge in that case, Richard Mawrey, said that the system would disgrace a banana republic. Whether or not he went slightly over the top in saying that, the issue clearly has to be tackled. The abuses that went to court in Birmingham and resulted in the removal of six councillors from office were almost exactly the same kind of abuses which, in my own area of Pendle, we saw nearly four years ago. Unfortunately, that case never got to court, but the abuses certainly took place and I still have a file, which is literally an inch thick, explaining exactly what happened there.
	The cases that go to court of postal voting fraud and absent voting fraud are just the tip of the iceberg. The reason why they are the tip of the iceberg is that if you have been subjected to bribery, intimidation or undue influence by people who have a great deal of influence, authority and power over you, you will not want to stand up in court and give evidence against them. That is why it is difficult to take these cases to court. Nevertheless, by tightening up the system and introducing new rules, I believe that a great deal of the fraud can be stopped.
	The Government have set out three key objectives for what they are trying to do in this Bill: ensuring access to voting for all, the highest possible turnout and the lowest possible fraud—what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor summarised as access, participation and security. I would suggest that these aims make sense only if they are taken together and if it is accepted that to some extent there has to be a trade-off between them. You cannot maximise all three. In particular, there is a clear relationship between the turnout and the level of possible fraud. You can have 100 per cent turnout—indeed, you can have 110 per cent turnout, as it was rumoured used to happen in some elections in Northern Ireland—if you are prepared to accept a very high level of fraud, but we are not. The mere fact of clamping down on fraud will reduce the apparent turnout. I say "apparent", because if you stop people voting twice or three times, you are not reducing the real turnout.
	I put forward an alternative view, based more on regarding the integrity of the ballot as fundamental. First, the maximum possible accuracy of the electoral register is important. The Minister was right to say that the level of inaccuracy in the register, particularly in many inner-city areas, is a scandal and a disgrace. It has got to be tackled in two ways: the people on it who should not be on it have to be removed, and the many people who are not on it who should be on it have to be put there. That is one of the most fundamental aspects to increasing participation. Of course, it will not in itself increase turnout. It may be that the people who do not bother to get on the register are those who have the lowest propensity to vote once they are. Having a fuller and more accurate electoral register might actually reduce the percentage turnout in some places, but it may increase the number of people who go to vote, which is more important than the percentage turnout.
	Secondly, votes should be cast by the person to whom the vote belongs and they should be cast in secret. Those are the two fundamental principles of voting, which are more important than getting the turnout higher and higher regardless of other consequences. I am also a bit uneasy about the idea that turnout is a matter for government, or even for the returning officers. The choices that people have must include the ability not to vote and to make the decision, "I can't be bothered", "I don't like any of them; they're all a waste of time", or simply, "I don't agree with the system, therefore I'm not going to vote". The job of getting people interested and committed enough to a candidate or candidates to go out there and vote is primarily not the Government's; it is the job of the candidates themselves and their supporters. That particularly involves the political parties.
	It is interesting that no one has talked about the political parties yet, as though the whole electoral system takes place independently of them and they are somehow separate, different and perhaps a nuisance. They are fundamental to it. Without the parties, we would not have a democratic system in this country and very few people would bother to vote, no matter what incentives the Government gave them to do so.
	I do not want to get it across that I am against high turnouts. I was integrally involved—although I was not the agent—in a local election during the all-postal pilots that occurred in my part of the world two years ago, which got the percentage turnouts up. I believe that the Whitefield ward in Nelson in the borough of Pendle had the highest turnout in the whole country, at 82 per cent. Our party workers claimed at the end—obviously people were voting every day and we were getting the lists—that there was no one else left whom they could persuade to turn out to vote—that they were all either dead, abroad, in prison or they were not going to vote for us anyway. I believe that most of those who comprised the 82 per cent were honest voters.
	If returning officers are to be given the task of getting the turnout up, there is a real risk that they will intervene in such a way as to favour one candidate or one party over another candidate or another party in an electoral area. There is a real risk that they will be accused of intervening in a way that discriminates against one party or candidate as against another. I suspect that those accusations will come from all quarters over time. We should look at that issue more carefully in Grand Committee.
	Many other fascinating issues in the Bill will be discussed. Like the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, I think that it is an ideal Bill to go into Grand Committee. In Grand Committee we will be able to tackle what some of us consider the fascinating intricacies of the Bill in a way that we would find more difficult in the context of the whole House. However, we shall want to look at important issues of principle on Report and perhaps have some interesting arguments about them. I welcome the Bill very much indeed. Sad person as I may be, I very much look forward to taking part in its remaining stages.

Lord Elder: My Lords, as many other participants in the debate have suggested, there is, indeed, much to be welcomed in the Bill. I think that noble Lords on all sides have said that.
	I start by discussing under-registration, which has been an abiding problem in the UK. There are worries that we are slipping into a situation of institutionalised under-registration. Some of the measures in the Bill will genuinely help to ensure that that will not happen. Introducing performance standards for election officials will start to bring confidence that the registration process is being taken seriously and that all areas will be forced to ensure that they compare with the best. The flexibility of late registration is welcome and very helpful in that context, notwithstanding the difficulties that officials might have in dealing with it. The increase in registration is a necessity in a modern democracy. It is also high time that election offences were taken more seriously, so the new offences, in particular on fraudulent applications, are also greatly to be welcomed.
	I wish to concentrate my remarks on two issues in the Bill: individual registration and the pilot areas, which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours talked about; and postal votes, which, although not directly related to the former, is related in the minds of the Electoral Commission at least.
	The Electoral Commission has been a very strong supporter of individual registration. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours that it has put itself in a very challenging position in terms of any future assessments of the benefits of that by declaring so wholeheartedly in advance that it is entirely committed to it. That is unfortunate. However, the commission accepts that the problems are real and—although it is not perhaps appropriate to go into the matter in detail—that they are very political.
	Individual registration is unlikely to have an even impact on all political parties. That inevitably makes some political parties rather more nervous and more concerned about the consequences than others. In the context of people freely admitting that the level of registration may, at least initially, fall as a result of individual registration, we ought to be very wary of going down that road. We already accept that there are something like 3 million to 4 million people not registered at the moment. To introduce something that at least in the short term might increase that number seems to be rather difficult.
	The proposal for pilot areas emerged largely, as far as I can see, because a compromise was sought between what the commission wanted and what the Government were prepared to accept. Now that the commission is opposing pilot areas for the range of reasons that it has set out in the very full briefing that it has sent us—not least because of the difficulties of having any kind of mass advertising campaign, which would not have a mass impact because it would be able to reflect only the small areas that were trying to introduce pilot schemes—I doubt whether there is any particular advantage in continuing with pilot schemes as they currently stand. The Electoral Commission is no longer in favour of them and it is not obvious what the benefit would be.
	One of the problems with both the enthusiasm for pilot schemes and the new transitional arrangements is that the Electoral Commission has been entirely thirled to the notion that the only way to deal with the perceived and real problem with postal voting is to introduce individual registration over the whole system. That is demonstrably not the case. It is perfectly possible to deal with fraud in postal voting by introducing the necessary personal identifiers for postal voting and making sure that across the whole country electoral registration officers have experience of that system of postal voting without having to extend the scheme any further at this stage.
	I look hopefully to individual registration. However, if the measures in the Bill for increasing registration, sorting out registration and dealing with the absolutely accepted problem that we have of under-registration had already been introduced and people had the resources and the statutory right, power and necessity to do something about the problem, we could have seen how registration had gone in the present system before we went any further. I accept that there is an absolute case for going further in relation to postal voting, because there has been definite evidence of fraud in some areas. I would be prepared to live with that, but it does not seem to me that the case for rolling out individual registration has been made.
	I am sure that all these areas will be gone into in great depth when we get into Grand Committee. It is extraordinary, but there are an awful lot of people around here who will take a great deal of pleasure in the Grand Committee. Perhaps denying us a vote is really a bit of a nuisance; we could get rid of all these enthusiasms in other areas if we still had the vote. Some of the issues that have come out of this debate about attitudes to individual registration and the attitudes of the Electoral Commission come back to a more general question, which the powers that be might wish to consider. Here, I am echoing some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made on the exclusion of political parties from discussion of the political process, which is a curious phenomenon.
	Some of the difficulties that the commission has faced could have been handled differently if it had had more political advice. I know why this House moved amendments to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act to exclude people with political experience from the commission, and maybe it would be going too far to change that, although there is a case for doing so. Some kind of additional board, not as at present comprised of officials from the various parties but at a more senior level, with the sort of experience that abounds in this House, might be very helpful to act as a sounding board for the commissioners. I know that the Speaker's Committee already exists, but that has a different function. It—or the commission, or the Government—might consider whether there would be some benefit in going down that road. A lot of the issues that have come out in this debate could have been dealt with at an earlier stage if that had been the case. Indeed, when the original legislation was being considered, some of us felt that the exclusion of political parties was not of great benefit.
	The Bill is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. I look forward to the Grand Committee, when many of these issues can be discussed in more detail. I will strongly support the Government's moves to increase registration and access to voting, which are essential to any democracy.

Lord Rennard: My Lords, this debate has been a welcome and rare opportunity to re-examine our electoral mechanisms. For too much of the past century, our democratic framework was based on legislation from the previous century and, as a result, our electoral laws failed to change as parties developed, lifestyles changed and new technology became available. It is to the great credit of this Government that since 1997 more attention has been paid to this important subject than has generally been the case with their predecessors—although, as my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market pointed out, we still have a method for counting votes at Westminster elections that was appropriate only for 19th century politics when there were but two voting blocs. For those of us who seek a 21st-century democracy, that issue is regrettably outside the remit of the Bill.
	The issues in the Bill, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor outlined, include ensuring that everyone has access to voting, increasing voter participation and minimising fraud and unfair practices. It is to be hoped that there is a minimum of conflict between those worthy principles, but the problem is that they are sometimes in conflict, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has just pointed out; and our debate today has revolved—and the later stages of the Bill will, no doubt, revolve—around those conflicts. Indeed, a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, still bear scars from the debates two years ago on these issues. Let us hope that we have all learned from them.
	My noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market has already welcomed the Bill in principle and much of its content—in particular, the measures to increase registration, participation and security. She has suggested some measures to improve it—in particular, encouraging young people to vote by giving them the right to do so from the age of 16.
	My noble friend Lord Garden raised important questions about the democratic rights of our servicemen and servicewomen. We accept that there are difficulties in ensuring fairness for them, and we hope that the Government will use their best endeavours to address those problems in the remaining stages of the Bill.
	I would like to dwell on the main area of controversy, as I see it. I expect most of our future debates to revolve around postal voting and individual voter registration. For some years we have wrestled with the issues of facilitating the voting process while providing safeguards against potential fraud and preserving confidence in the integrity of the system. In my maiden speech to this House during the passage of the Representation of the People Act 2000, I welcomed the abandonment of having to state a reason for choosing to vote by post. I said that,
	"measures to make it easier to vote while ensuring safeguards against fraud are to be welcomed".—[Official Report, 31/1/00; col. 33.]
	But, perhaps with hindsight, we should have thought more about those safeguards as parties began to use their resources to sign up increasingly large numbers of their supporters as postal voters.
	Among the worst abuses of the system was in the Birmingham City Council elections of 2003. A "vote-rigging factory" was discovered where ballot papers were ripped open and altered. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, referred to that, as did the noble Lords, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Lord Greaves. The Lord Chancellor correctly pointed out that that problem occurred with ordinary postal voting, not all-postal voting. That illustrates my point that the problems that occur with postal voting can occur wherever you have postal voting and not simply with all-postal voting. There is a general problem with postal voting and a fundamental lack of security, which we have to address.
	The scale of the problem is unknown. A number of noble Lords have said that it may be confined to a few areas. The noble Lords, Lord Elder and Lord Campbell-Savours, suggested that the problem may be confined to a few small parts of the country and that therefore we should have measures to address the issue just in those areas. But how do we know the scale of the problem in many parts of the country? Many of us in the House today have long experience of elections and we know how there can be many close results. A handful of votes can change the outcome in a handful of wards in the council elections and can therefore change control of the council. A handful of votes can change the outcome in parliamentary elections and could one day change the outcome in a general election. Therefore, it is not satisfactory to say that we should proceed as we are with postal voting without the tougher safeguards required.
	A potential solution to the problem appeared to be agreed between all the parties. A short while ago, we all thought that individual voter registration would address most of the problems. A signature on the form that would allow you to go on the electoral register could be compared with the signatures on the form on which you applied for a postal vote and on the form accompanying that postal vote. Until recently, I thought that we were heading pretty much in that direction, as soon as it could be done.
	Of course, there are some problems with that proposal. There could be a genuine fear that people would miss out on registering to vote if there were a change in the traditional system of household registration. But I do not have a problem with the principle of each household still having a form which every voter signs individually and on which their date of birth appears. I think that that would lessen any problem of a drop in registration that might arise. I always assumed that that process would be supplemented by the capacity of an individual to fill in a form separately either at the same time or subsequently.
	It now appears, if I understand the argument correctly, that those on the government side fear that the requirement to provide a signature and date of birth will be a significant deterrent to people registering to vote in the first place. I can see why they thought that pilot experiments might be the way forward. But I also think that they should play close attention to the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours; that is, in many ways it is difficult for the Electoral Commission to assess those pilots, having declared emphatically after the experience of the past six years that individual voter registration is the way forward.
	I know that some of the fears of the Government and the Labour Party are based on experience in Northern Ireland. However, I suggest that that is not necessarily an appropriate model for us to look at. In Northern Ireland the requirements go further. They go in the direction, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, pointed, of also requiring a national insurance number to be provided. Many people are unaware of their national insurance number and might even struggle to find out where they could obtain it. I think that the advantage of a little more security but too great disfranchisement might rule that out as an option.
	There is another fundamental difference with the Northern Ireland experience. It seems to me that, to obtain this accurate register, we are willing to have very thorough doorstep canvassing, as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor outlined. For reasons of security, in many places in Northern Ireland widespread individual doorstep canvassing is less likely to take place, but I would not see that as such a problem in Great Britain.
	The transitional arrangements proposed by the Electoral Commission seem very sensible to me, and I do not think that they would lead to the problems foreseen by the noble Lord, Lord Elder. That is because it would not be compulsory to provide a sample signature unless you wanted to vote by post in the future. If you ever did want to vote by post, you would have to provide a signature on an application form in any event. You would then have to provide a further signature on a form that accompanies the ballot paper. It is not an intolerable burden to require a signature at the early stages, but some problems remain.
	I understand the point made privately to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, that people may decide that they want to vote by post at a later date. I hope that many of them will have provided a signature on the registration form. I believe that this issue could be explained clearly on the registration form. These days, people are used to providing a signature on many forms; indeed, these days it is very rare not to have to sign any official form. If a postal vote is to be sought at a later date, according to a letter from the chairman of the Electoral Commission, Mr Sam Younger, it would be possible. I have discussed this issue with him in some detail. He says:
	"Anyone who did not register their signature and date of birth at the annual canvass but who later wanted to vote by post or proxy would still be able to provide their identification details and get an absent vote".
	In reality, individual voter registration, with the requirement for a signature and a date of birth, should become compulsory requirements to be included on the electoral register within the next few years. After careful consideration, I am not therefore attracted to the idea of piloting this requirement. It is a very unsatisfactory process. The idea of different authorities picking and choosing different ground rules for the conduct of elections in such very controversial areas is simply not a good way forward. The process of analysing such pilots and the need to legislate based on them is another most unsatisfactory point. The Government's overruling of the Electoral Commission and the views of every other party on the postal voting experiment in 2004 still leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of quite a number of us.
	The issue of personal identifiers has been considered carefully by the Electoral Reform Society. It says that,
	"the case for the collection of personal identifiers in the registration process is essential . . . and that the use of pilots will only delay their introduction nationwide".
	I agree with that. The case for needing some basic security against the potential of postal vote fraud and the need to demonstrate that we have acted to safeguard the integrity of the ballot process is such that we should not be piloting the minimum safeguards required. If there is a case for piloting anything, and where I have a genuine dilemma, it is simply in relation to household forms requiring individual signatures as necessary—or simply having individual forms. A powerful case is made on behalf of many of the leading groups representing disabled people that we should simply go straight to individual voter registration. There is, therefore, something to be said for piloting the forms of registration but not the principle of what I believe is a minimal check against fraud.
	Finally, another issue which is relevant to the Bill, but which has not been considered so far, concerns constituency election expense limits and trying to get back to the principle that huge financial advantage should not enable one to buy particular constituencies. For anyone unaware of how the parties are changing their practices on spending in individual constituencies, I would recommend the closing chapters of the book by the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, Dirty Politics, Dirty Times, which was part of my Christmas reading this year. What a sad life some of us lead. I believe that the Government have a worthy aim in suggesting new rules to cap local spending over a four-month period before polling day. This is based on the worthy aim of restoring the essential principles established by the Representation of the People Act 1883 that there should be a constituency spending limit. It was, I believe, an inadvertent consequence of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 that candidates became able to spend unlimited sums in support of their campaign providing that they did so before the dissolution of Parliament. The four-month period may prove problematic for general elections, as we have not yet had the good sense in this country to legislate for fixed-term parliaments. However, it is something that has probably become necessary, and if we have not got fixed term parliaments within the next five years or so, I expect that we will return to this issue and possibly propose a 12-month period to deal with it.
	However, the proposal in the Bill fails to address a much larger part of the problem. The distinction between national and local spending has become blurred in recent elections. Letters addressed to individual voters from party leaders are no longer generally treated as constituency expenditure provided that they do not mention the name of the constituency. In the last general election campaign that meant, for example, that my friend Sue Younger-Ross received no fewer than four letters from Mr Michael Howard urging her to make her husband, the Liberal Democrat MP for Teignbridge, redundant by voting Conservative. The technique was not effective—perhaps the targeting was not very good—as his majority increased tenfold. But it is not right that not a penny of the cost of those letters from a party leader—four to one individual—appeared against the constituency election expense limit, while a letter from Richard to his wife—admittedly not a very romantic one—saying "Please vote for me again" would have counted against the constituency election expense limit. We have also seen expensive targeting of poster boards to particular constituencies, as opposed to national coverage in previous elections spread across all constituencies.
	So, in conclusion, I ask the Government to consider seriously how this issue can be properly addressed. If we are to improve the health of our democracy, we must do more about this problem. More fundamental issues remain to be considered about the health of our democracy, but the Bill offers a welcome way forward to address some of the problems.

Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, this has been a highly informative debate into the very basis of our democracy. As my noble friend Lady Hanham mentioned, we welcome measures to tackle electoral fraud. But although the Bill creates new offences to prosecute fraud, that is not the same as acting to stop the scope for fraud in the first place, and fraud has emerged as a major talking point of public concern in the past eight years.
	It is a cause of great sadness to me and, I am sure, to many others that constant messing around and tinkering with the voting system has undermined public confidence in what was the most respected and honest democracy in the world. Time and again, we hear Ministers pontificating about modernising Britain and parroting the cry of constitutional reform, but this is one area where, so far from modernising, we seem to have gone backwards. Not for more than a century has the credibility of the electoral system taken such a severe knock among a large section of the electorate.
	Where once we had simple voting procedures, the Government have complicated them, sometimes running three different voting systems together at the same election to the bafflement of voters. They have failed to maintain barriers to fraud, ploughing on with experiments here and pilots there, many of which have crashed ignominiously to the ground. As my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville reminded us, no one in this House will ever forget the stand that your Lordships made on the question of all-postal ballots and the banning of voting in secret in a ballot box at a traditional polling station. Five times your Lordships tried to defend the secret ballot and five times the Government overrode this House to impose an experiment that ended in predictable chaos and confusion. Events proved this House right and the Deputy Prime Minister wrong. How disappointing it is then to find in the Bill no retreat from that foolish and misguided position.
	In winding up, can the Minister give an assurance that all-postal ballots will not be used again this country? Can she give an assurance that there will be no fiddling with election dates? Will she fully and finally rule out any idea that local elections in 2007 or 2008 might be delayed, or even dropped, as was recently reported? If not, we will certainly need to table amendments to address that question in Committee.
	It is paramount in any democracy that people should believe that the electoral system is fair, acceptable and not subject to fraud. The Bill makes a number of proposals to prevent such things from happening again. While we welcome measures to tackle fraud, this Bill could have gone a little further in allaying fears.
	Perhaps it would be useful if I summed up our principle objections: the lack of tried and tested individual registration with national insurance numbers, as used so effectively to cut fraud in Northern Ireland; the continuing use of all-postal voting, despite many calls to scrap it; the ongoing lack of parliamentary scrutiny of pilot schemes, allowing the Government to fiddle with the electoral system at whim; the reduction in the threshold for forfeiting deposits in parliamentary elections to 2 per cent, which will boost extremist parties like the BNP in obtaining freepost mailings and broadcasts; the lack of provision to boost service and overseas voting; allowing independent candidates the freedom to decide any ballot paper description, but limiting registered political parties to just five permitted descriptions.
	However, notwithstanding, we support a number of provisions: anonymous registration, for those whose personal safety is genuinely at risk, such as those fleeing domestic violence; requiring voters to sign before receiving a ballot paper at a polling station; providing marked registers for postal votes; lowering the candidacy age to 18, to be consistent with the voting age; allowing candidates to pay their deposits by credit or debit card.
	The Government have already introduced two major changes to the electoral system, and this Bill will bring a third. The first was the introduction of rolling registration which, as far as we can tell, has gone reasonably well—although people have said that it may enable bogus voters to stay on the register indefinitely. The second was the relaxation of access to postal voting, which this House, led by my noble friend Lady Hanham, repeatedly warned against and which subsequently turned into a disaster. The third major change is registration, a major part of the Bill, with the switch from household to individual registration.
	It is important that the Government clearly want one thing—a halfway house—while the Electoral Commission wants another: it wants the Bill to go the whole hog right from the start. I have the impression that the Government are dragging their feet on the Electoral Commission's original proposals. I am sceptical that the integrity of the electoral system will be seen to improve much with the Government's halfway house. The Electoral Commission wants a truly individual registration system. It believes that such a system is now a vital part of restoring credibility in the system, after the postal voting farrago. The Electoral Commission makes that clear in its briefing letter:
	"Without individual registration, it is hard to see how the very real concerns . . . about the security of the postal voting system can be properly addressed".
	Clause 14 makes provision for the Government to introduce pilots for personal identifiers to be collected during electoral registration; namely, a person's signature and date of birth. The Government have ruled out introducing the tried and tested system of individual registration used in Northern Ireland. We share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, on Clauses 15 to 17, but maybe for different reasons. The Government's proposals for the adoption of a few local authority pilot schemes is wholly insufficient. There is no need for pilots, given that Northern Ireland has trialled the systems extensively over a number of years.
	We want the Northern Ireland scheme to be introduced in Great Britain. We believe that that is essential to ensure an accurate electoral register and curtail postal vote fraud. As Conservatives, we also believe that individual registration should be backed up by requiring proof of citizenship for non-UK voters, such as their passport, if they do not have a national insurance number. That reflects the fact that the electoral franchise is restricted for overseas citizens living in the UK.
	We have had an experiment with postal voting. It went wrong and, to patch it up, we are about to embark on another experiment, with the Electoral Commission pulling one way and the Government another. Why do we need to take such risks with something as important as the credibility of the electoral system, which was working reasonably well before the reforms began?
	We tend to hear quite a lot about how voter participation is in sharp decline; fears of voter apathy; and, as a consequence, of great dangers to democracy, and the like. Of course our system may have its imperfections but, as I have already intimated, the greater risk may lie with half-baked changes that further erode the electorate's confidence in the system. We must accept that no amount of meddling with the electoral system will dramatically increase turnout. That will come about only when the electorate goes into an election very uncertain of the result.
	When the outcome was unclear and two parties were arguing vigorously with very different policy stances, we had one of the highest turnouts ever seen in this country. That was as recently as 1992. I do not think that the country has suddenly gone into a paroxysm of apathy since then. The case is greatly overstated that voter apathy and problems of participation have increased massively. Wherever the Government have introduced such proposals—whenever they have travelled down the road of electoral reform—we seem to be given further evidence of the law of unintended consequences. I fear that the Bill will be more of the same.
	The Electoral Commission and the Government are full of grand schemes and noble projects, many of them costly, to improve voter registration and participation. I wonder whether we would not now do better just to stick to basics. For example, let us take fewer risks with postal voting. We have made quite a mess of it in the past few years; we now need to avoid further mistakes that could further erode the credibility of our electoral system.
	As many noble Lords have shown, there is much to discuss in Committee and on Report but, as always, we on these Benches will attempt to improve the Bill as it passes through your Lordships' House.

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to what was an interesting collection, if I may describe it as such, of speeches on Second Reading. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that my ambition, rather than to leave scars in the Bill is to leave deep impressions. I suppose that I sit somewhere between the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in his fear and concern about it being discussed not in Committee on the Floor of the House, and the passion and desire of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, who cannot wait to see it in Grand Committee.
	I am in the middle between those two. From my experience as a Minister in Grand Committee, I have found that that enables us to get to the heart of discussion. Because we do not vote, the quality of debate can sometimes be enhanced. From the government perspective, that enables us to have real discussion and to come back with solid proposals where that is appropriate. So I, for one, would argue that that enables us to have a better quality of debate. So I am glad that, with the support of the House, the Bill may go into Grand Committee.
	I also want to approach the Bill with as much cross-party support and camaraderie as I possibly can. One thing that is so important when we debate anything to do with our electoral system is to ensure that we inspire confidence in the nation that we, as parliamentarians of either House, recognise the critical importance of the issues before us. That is best done when we have our detailed discussions and debates and, yes, disagree, but do so in your Lordships' House rather perhaps than outside it. I very much look forward to that. I am also interested to know what names will emerge during the Bill's passage that only our mums seem to have called us. My mum used to call me Kate, as a matter of interest, so I would have had a very different name on my form if I had ever stood for any election, which, I have to confess, I never have.
	I shall seek, in my winding-up speech, to address as many of the points that have been made as I can—always with the proviso that any I fail to address I will respond to in correspondence. I start with the three points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, which she asked me to confirm. She asked me whether I was prepared to rule out all-postal voting in the future. Obviously I would do so in the 2006 elections, but I shall not rule it out for ever in all circumstances. I cannot think of any circumstances at the moment, but it would be wrong to rule it out always and for ever. I recognise the history that has evolved around it, but I do not think that we should rule it out for ever.
	On changing the dates of elections, we do not like to change them. Holding local and European elections together, for example, has increased turnout in both, and we need to think about that in the future. There are no plans not to hold elections in 2007. Press reports have been entirely speculative, and nothing else. I hope that that will be helpful.
	On the threshold for deposits being lowered to 2 per cent and on independent candidates being allowed to use a description, both were removed from the Bill in another place. It was clear that there was widespread opposition to lowering the threshold for deposits, so it remains at 5 per cent. I hope that that is helpful to the noble Baroness.
	I begin by talking about CORE, as we shall come to call it and love it. As noble Lords will know from what my noble and learned friend said and from the background to the Bill, the principal aim of CORE is to provide national access to the information that is currently held in over 400 locally held electoral registers. I think this will be very important to statutory users of this information—registration officers, the Electoral Commission and, of course, political parties. It may be able to offer additional benefits in the future, including for individual voters, but it is not proposed—the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, made the important point about data protection, and I declare my interest as the Minister responsible for data protection issues—that normal members of the public or anyone else not specifically authorised should be able to access details on any individual.
	Detailed provision on what version of the registers may be provided and to whom and for what purpose are set out, as noble Lords will know, in the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001. The schemes that we are proposing will not detract in any way from the right of objection to the disclosure of information held under such schemes for commercial marketing purposes. It is critical that the infrastructure that supports CORE will be vigorously tested to ensure that it meets the security requirements appropriate for such information. I am sure that we will debate this as we take the Bill to the further stages of its passage through your Lordships' House.
	It is also important to realise that CORE will simply mirror the information that is already held on local registers principally, as I have said, for the use of large-scale users such as political parties and the Electoral Commission. So any registered person appears on CORE, but the existing ability to opt out of the register, which is available for sale, will of course remain. It is not a case of signing up to CORE; it will simply mirror those registers. Such a person will be able to sign up to change their details online if they so wish—a mechanism similar to the one used for Internet banking, for those who are familiar with that.
	My noble friend Lady Gale talked about the provision of the Welsh language in CORE. These issues will be fully considered in the detailed technical specifications for CORE that will be set out in regulation. Again, it is important to note that CORE is not making any changes to the data that is collected and held for registration; it is merely a question of by whom and in what manner it will be held. Those issues will be taken on board.
	I shall spend most of the time that I have to make my winding-up speech on the pilots versus the transitional arrangements. I shall begin with some of the comments that were made about the Electoral Commission. My noble friends Lord Elder and Lord Campbell-Savours talked, in slightly different ways, about what I would describe as political experience, to which my noble friend Lord Elder referred in terms of the Electoral Commission. In particular, further issues were raised about membership of the commission in view of recent political experience. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, raised that, in particular.
	As noble Lords will probably know, the Committee on Standards in Public Life will do a general review of the Electoral Commission this year, focusing on overall performance. In addition, the Speakers' Committee will review the efficiency of the Electoral Commission in a more limited, technical sense. I am sure that the comments made during the passage of this legislation will be borne in mind in its approach.
	My experience of the Electoral Commission is quite limited. It will no doubt grow during the passage of this Bill. I do not accept that because the commission has a particular viewpoint, it cannot objectively evaluate the pilots. Many institutions and organisations take very strong views, but are capable of looking at the evidence before them. I am quite sure, too, that the way in which we lay out how that will happen will ensure that that is the case. So I do not accept that principle: it is possible to do that.
	I have not yet seen the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. They are not available, but I look forward to discussing them in Committee and during later stages of the Bill. My noble friend talked about the hostility that the Electoral Commission has to pilots. I met Mr Younger today and I did not sense real hostility to the pilots. He said that he saw transitional arrangements and pilots working side by side. I am not sure that that would be precisely his position. I am sure that when he reads Hansard he will correct me if I have misinterpreted him in any way.
	I want to give a view on transitional arrangements versus pilots and to raise a few issues of concern. It is important that we think about that carefully. Anything that will change the system must be looked at in a very clear and precise way. Although I am not by nature a great fan of piloting initiatives, confidence, and aligned to that, certainty, are important. If a pilot states, "We are going to ask you to do this as a matter of course", we are able to evaluate clearly the consequences of that action. Noble Lords will know that we have only the Northern Ireland experience. I accept that it is probably inappropriate to just translate that across because a whole range of factors will be involved. None the less, it will have resonance to political parties and to Parliament when one looks at what happened.
	The difficulty with the transitional arrangements described is that it is an either/or situation. It is very difficult to limit the number of variables with which one is dealing. You obtain a form, which indicates that you can put your signature or not, and give information or not: it does not really matter either way. In my view, it would cause confusion for people trying to deal with the form. From research, clarity for the person being asked to do something is of critical importance in getting the result that you want.
	The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, described himself as an anorak. I join the noble Lord in aspects of that. Perhaps we are a House of anoraks. In this debate, in one sense, we are. We understand and we know what we seek to achieve. But an individual may receive information about voting which may be a new phenomenon to him—there may be no family history of voting or he may live in an area where there is low turnout, and so forth. He may receive something that is less than clear about what he should and should not do. I am not sure that we would get from that the kind of results that we need.
	The advantage of piloting is that if, in asking people to do more, we see an effect which we do not want—bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said about the balancing act—but it is very specific because it is happening in the pilot area, we can try to correct it in other ways. That might include giving more reassurance to people, redesigning the form, or electoral registration officers and political parties going out to talk to people. We can try to counterbalance negative effects. But if it is an either/or situation, we will never know.
	If I receive a form which states that I should fill in my date of birth but I can choose not to, I may choose not to. How would anyone know whether I would have filled it in if it were not compulsory? So, reflecting my talks with Mr Younger earlier today, while I would like to believe in the transition arrangements I simply do not think that they will get us anywhere. All they will do is create more confusion. We know that it is important that the form is as clear and concise as possible. Given that I find forms incredibly difficult, I am the first to say, "Give me something that is clear and states: 'I want you to do this and this is why I want you to do it"'. It should not say: "I want you to do this, but you don't have to". That is hopeless and would not work for me.
	The results of a positive approach are clear and enable us to think quickly and carefully about what needs to be done if the effect is to lower the number of those who register and participate. We can do that only against a backdrop of absolute clarity. For those reasons it is important to stick with the pilots, recognising that what noble Lords want to see in Committee is greater clarity on their timetables and our ambitions for them. We are all heading in the same direction here, but are arguing about how we travel. There is no quarrel about the end product, which might be the case with other legislation. I am keen to see this Bill pass out of your Lordships' House so that we can begin to pilot as soon as possible and thus gather answers to some of the questions.
	That noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, expressed her concern about the proposals for the pilots that were addressed today. The pilots will not include tests of electronic voting in any form, but will include an extension to the voting period to increase accessibility and encourage participation. We shall test taking ballot boxes into residential homes on polling day, and tests on electronic counting methods so that we can further refine the systems previously used in order to get them right. Moreover, local authorities have come forward and asked to participate in these tests, on the basis of what they know about their own areas. The pilots are being designed with that in mind, which I hope provides reassurance that we are not moving into other areas such as texting. The noble Baroness referred to the "Big Brother" element in the different kinds of voting systems, but we need to think about how people vote; I do not suggest in any way that we should move in that direction. It is important to ensure that people are inspired to take up their vote. The pilots will be helpful in showing how changes to accessibility may help to achieve that.
	My noble friend Lady Gale sought to ensure that the National Assembly for Wales was consulted before any pilots were conducted in Wales. The Assembly is not included as a statutory consultee because both registration and the conduct of local elections in Wales are reserved matters. However, if a Welsh local authority applies, we will engage with the Assembly on the detail of any proposed scheme. I hope that goes some way to addressing her concerns.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, asked when the age of 18 begins. You must be 18 years of age on the day that the nominations are made. The position is the same for all other elections, so everything will be brought into line. The rule will apply for all elections held in the future. At this point I will not engage in the argument on whether the voting age should be 16 or 18. I have a 16 year-old at home, so noble Lords will understand that I have a particular view on it.
	The noble Lords, Lord Garden and Lord Brooke, the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and others rightly raised the issue of service voters. The noble Lord, Lord Garden, has been terrier-like in making sure that the matter does not go away. I am grateful to him. We are all trying to find the right solution. I noted the noble Lord's words about an order-making power. One or two of those have proved useful of late, but I take the point that it is better to define this. The noble Lord knows that we are engaged on this at the DCA, and that my noble and learned friend will be talking to his opposite number to ensure that we can reach a shared response. I look forward to discussing the matter with the noble Lord in Committee and I hope that we will find a solution to these well recognised issues.
	The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked about funding and whether the amount was incremental or absolute, what the current position is and how the totals compare. We are trying to work with the electoral administrators to assess the financial implications of the measures in the Bill, particularly on local authorities. We have agreed a transfer of £21.1 million per year for each of the next two financial years to authorities in England and Wales. This will go via the general local government grant and will be entered into the baseline to become ongoing funding beyond 2008. That is all I can say about the issue. That is the approach we have taken and we think it will address the particular needs.
	Sticking with money, if I can put it that way, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hanham and Lady Scott, asked about election expenses and the four-month proposal. I sent a message to my officials asking, "Can I say that we are listening?", to which they replied, "Yes, you can". I am aware of the concerns that have been raised today and in the other place. Indeed, I mentioned this to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, when we had a brief conversation. The question is how to maintain transparency and integrity in this area and how to achieve a workable system that does not place undue burdens on party workers. We are very keen to return to this issue at the appropriate moment and I hope noble Lords can see what we are trying to do with the Bill. I would be keen to discuss—both in Committee and outside your Lordships' House—any ideas and proposals that people may have. But that is our workable proposition at the moment, although I am very open to considering other aspects.
	I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, about expenditure being recorded at national or local level. Obviously we need to consider that. We want to make sure that expenditure is recorded in the right category—either national party campaign expenditure or candidates' election expenses—but we are very happy to look at that issue, too. I suggest that we should have discussions outside the Committee as well because there is much to talk about and, of course, across the political parties there will be agreement and, possibly, disagreement.
	My noble friend Lady Gale asked about deposits paid by credit or debit cards, and whether agents could pay instead if constituency parties did not have cards. The answer is yes; that is not a problem. We are trying to clarify that you can use credit or debit cards because the current legal status is not clear. It is not compulsory—people can do other things—but we have to make it clear that we actually allow them to do that.
	As to the question of candidates being accompanied by a person of their choosing even though not a spouse or a civil partner, we are very open to considering proposals in this area. The law at present has a discretion for returning officers to allow others to attend the count, but it is true that the Bill removes the discretion as part of the new poll arrangements relating to observers. We are considering suggestions raised in another place to modify the proposals regarding observers and it is quite possible that we could consider the change suggested by my noble friend if it is appropriate. Again, I shall be happy to receive the views of other noble Lords who will be participating in the Committee on how we should approach the matter.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, thought that the Electoral Commission was going overboard and demanding too much detail on election expenses returns. As she will see, Clause 30 gives the Electoral Commission greater flexibility in prescribing the form which candidates will use for their submissions. The current procedures seem to be complex and confusing. We want to ensure that candidates more readily understand what the requirements are when submitting election expenses returns, and it is to be hoped that this will reduce the risk of error in completing the form. We believe that it should be comprehensive and clear but not place an undue burden on candidates and agents.
	The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, raised a point in which he has a great interest—policy development grants. I spent in the presidency quite a lot of time with his colleagues in the European Parliament. As he rightly pointed out, in its report of 2004 the Electoral Commission referred to extending policy development grants. I have a sense of déjà vu because I am sure I have read this out before in another debate at another time. As the noble Lord said, parties with two or more Members in the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly would be eligible. It was recommended that a further £1 million should be allocated to the scheme, making a pot of £3 million, and each of the six new parties should then receive a basic £125,000.
	My department has looked at and taken soundings on this recommendation, and has the scheme under active consideration. "Active consideration" can be interpreted as your Lordships wish and I am happy to discuss that with the noble Lord outside the Chamber. Quite a bit more work needs to be done to make these proposals workable, but I am happy to continue that dialogue, because I know that he attaches great importance to them, for obvious reasons.
	The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in his anorak speech, as it will now become known, raised fundamental issues about turnout, the role of government, parties and candidates. It is really important that government—by which I also mean Parliament in this context—makes sure that people understand the importance of the democratic system. The citizenship programme in schools is an example of how people can begin to understand how lucky we are to live under a democratic system. We know of countries all over the world where democracy has arrived. For me, the pictures from South Africa of the long procession of black people waiting in the blazing sun to vote—something which we take for granted—for the first time will always be one of the most poignant symbols of democracy. Governments, whoever they are, must continually remind people that they have a choice: they can kick us out and should exercise that choice if that is what they want.
	It is also critical to find opportunities to talk about the relevance of politics to people's lives. People sometimes say that politics is irrelevant; it is not. It is about everything that we do and the way in which we live our lives. It is also important that we make sure that people have the means to register, vote and express what they think. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves said, if people choose not to vote, that is fine, but let it be a choice, not because they do not know how to or have not had the information. I accept that candidates have a big part to play—they must sell their policies and themselves in a sense to put across their ideas to the electorate. They should not, however, replace the Government's role in explaining to people the democratic value and importance of voting.
	I hope that I have answered some, if not all, the points raised. I was going to say that I very much look forward to piloting the Bill, but that is probably a bad thing to say. We have tried to make it clear that the Bill is fundamentally about three different things: access to voting, participation and security. All those are essential for the health and legitimacy of our democracy—they are not options. I very much look forward to discussing the issue in future.
	On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Grand Committee.

Lord Beaumont of Whitley: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they propose to take to abate noise pollution caused by piped music.
	My Lords, looking at the speakers' list, I am aware that I am probably the only volunteer to take part in this debate. Others, I suspect, have been drafted in. The subject is of considerable importance, however, even though it has not been aired seriously in your Lordships' House previously. I therefore hope that your Lordships will allow me to slightly overrun my allotted time for speaking, although I promise not to exceed the time limit for the whole Unstarred Question. There is a lot to be said on the subject, although I assure noble Lords that I have cut my speech to the bone.
	Politicians from all main parties have declared that consumer choice—the rights of the consumer or citizen—is paramount and should now be extended to areas such as public education and health. People should in theory be able to choose in which hospital to have an operation or to which school to send their children in much the same way as they now choose a restaurant, shop or hotel. Such freedom of choice was unthinkable 40 years ago. Equally unthinkable 40 years ago was the now increasingly accepted freedom from cigarette smoke in public places.
	One freedom, however, has become far less common during the same period: the freedom to shop, eat, travel and even work without having to endure non-stop, inescapable music. Unwanted music becomes noise and noise is a fast-growing, but still under-recognised, pollutant. When music is welcomed, it is far from being a pollutant. For many people, it is one of life's greatest pleasures. What can turn it into a pollutant—a real pain in the ear—is a lack of choice. Music freely chosen or accepted is one thing; enforced and inescapable music is quite another.
	Consumers can vote with their feet and pockets and go to other pubs, shops or restaurants, so persuading retailers to change or end their tune. Many successful businesses such as Tesco flourish without piped music. However, such freedom of choice does not extend to public places such as hospitals, doctors' surgeries, public swimming pools and libraries, buses and trains, rail and bus stations and airports. There, the situation is radically different. These are places which people have to use and to which there is no practical alternative.
	This lack of choice is most acutely felt in three significant areas. The first is the health service. Many hospitals, including out-patient departments and some blood donor clinics, are filled with the sound of music or television. People who are lying immobilised on a hospital bed or trolley, or waiting long hours as an out-patient, may literally be powerless to escape non-stop music, be it from a radio, a TV or some other music system. Such unwanted and inescapable noise can make their health problems worse.
	There is more than anecdotal proof for this. A survey of 115 blood donors carried out by the University of Nottingham medical school in 1995 found that music made waiting donors, who were all volunteers but who were temporarily powerless, more anxious before donating, and more likely to be depressed after donating, than did silence. Individuals have given evidence on this matter. Sheila, a patient in the Western General hospital in Edinburgh, said:
	"The breast clinic which I attended on many occasions from April 2001 to April 2002 has muzac; also, as an in-patient, I found Ward 1 had a communal TV set. The chemotherapy ward 6 had a noisy radio or piped music . . . chemotherapy is bad enough without the blood-boiling irritation of muzac!"
	For in-patients on hospital wards, the supply of headphones ought to be regarded as universal and mandatory, in the same way as smoking is prohibited in hospitals. Patients will then be able to enjoy their own choice of music or television without inflicting it on their neighbours. The best hospitals already operate such a policy. For out-patients, however, the supply of headphones is normally impractical, but their anxieties while waiting should not be aggravated by unwanted television or music.
	The second area is travel. Piped music and/or television are causing increasing concern on trains. Although all train-operating companies now have to supply a quiet carriage that is—theoretically—free of mobile phones and similarly intrusive noises, some companies have been experimenting with piped television. Although they claim to provide one quiet carriage per train, this can prove hard to locate. That is understandable when they operate mostly commuter trains where travellers surge on and off. The companies make their money from advertisements beamed at what—jammed in the train, possibly unable to sit down and certainly unable to move to a quiet area—ranks as a classic captive audience. If national transport policy is to encourage commuters to use trains rather than cars, this is surely a regressive step. One of the chief advantages of car travel is that you can choose what sort of music, if any, to listen to.
	I turn to the workplace. The Royal National Institute for the Deaf, in a joint statement with the TUC in November 2004, highlighted the hearing problems of those 170,000-plus workers facing loud music in nightclubs and bars where damage can be clinically measurable. Proposals to lower the upper limit of noise permitted in such places to 80 from 85 decibels from next year should help those in the worst affected places.
	The problem is far more widespread, if less obvious, for those working in places where the music is not normally loud enough to threaten hearing physically but where it can cause great psychological stress. The problem of course is at its most acute over Christmas, when "Jingle Bells" may be repeated in some department stores up to 300 times a day. That is a terrible infliction on the people who work there. People at workplaces filled with endless music that they cannot control may not care to protest for many reasons—including making themselves unpopular with management. Their silence, however, should not be taken as acquiescence.
	To sum up, Pipedown, an admirable organisation to which I belong, and the UK Noise Association jointly call on all political parties and the relevant employers and trade unions to recognise that piped music often causes stress and psychological harm, even when not particularly loud. Legislation is needed to protect particularly the vulnerable groups, principally hospital patients, travellers and people working in environments filled with piped music, who are the victims of what has become a form of acoustic pollution.
	I call on the Government to introduce legislation to, first, prohibit piped music or television noise in the public areas of hospitals, in the same way as smoking is prohibited in hospitals; secondly, to make wearing headphones mandatory for passengers on buses, coaches and trains who wish to listen to music, whether supplied by the travel company or by themselves; thirdly, to ban piped music and piped television in hospitals generally, in the same way as smoking is prohibited; fourthly, to make the wearing of headphones mandatory for in-patients listening to television or music in public wards; and, fifthly, to carry out a comprehensive study of the long-term ill effects of piped music on employees to discover what psychological or physiological impact it has on those who dislike it. I call on the Government to do those things and ask them what steps they propose to take. If they do not propose to take any steps, I shall probably try to introduce a Bill into your Lordships' House myself.

Lord Addington: My Lords, when it fell to me to comment on a Question about piped music, the first thing that happened was that several people said, "Ah, it's an anti-Scottish measure". Then some remarks were made about pan pipes. The term that I would have used is canned music.
	At certain points, many of us will have been irritated by incessant background music that you do not choose. The big question is whether it does any real harm other than being a mild irritant. As the noble Lord said, we have to hear "Jingle Bells" 300 times at Christmas. I asked myself, "When do I like a certain degree of background music?" Occasionally, when you want to warm up for that season of festive spending and catching up with friends and relatives you do not see very often, inducing yourself to go and buy various things, the music builds up the atmosphere—or it becomes an irritant.
	When does piped music become an irritant? When it is just loud enough to make you raise your voice or to drown out something that is being said. The question, I am afraid, that we must ask is: does this hurt anybody? Have the Government, for example, done any work on this? Is there any point at which background noise below the level at which hearing is damaged causes people not to function properly? An example would be a doctor's reception area when someone with laryngitis is desperately trying to make themselves heard over canned music. That is probably something that the Two Ronnies would have dealt with better than we ever will, but we must try to address it. Do the Government have any guidance or structure on when background music is or is not appropriate?
	The question really posed by the noble Lord is: how should background music or noise be used? For instance, when a restaurant first opens, it puts on a little light music—I suppose the all-pervasive Mantovani might come into this—to get people in and so that it does not seem quite so empty for the first few diners. When it is not turned down, music forces the level of noise to creep up over the top, and then there is a problem. Often, if you ask someone in these situations to turn the music down, they will say yes. They do not really care either way, and, if they have heard the thing 500 times already, no one will be particularly listening.
	Does the music perform any real function intrinsic to your experience? Maybe it is thought that hearing "Jingle Bells" several hundred times a day really is an intrinsic part of your Christmas shopping. As you stagger around shops with small children, fighting off the bored-looking person in the ill-fitting elf costume, maybe it is important that you repeatedly hear children's versions of Christmas carols.
	The only real reason for banning piped music or taking action against it is if it is damaging health or infringing on personal liberty. Have the Government any guidelines or thoughts about where that line should be drawn? Should it be removed when someone has to listen to it? I seem only to have one point here, but there is an idea that piped music causes further stress. We should be looking at it when it stops communication between two people, or makes it more difficult. However, if you are the consumer, you always have the advantage of being able to turn on your heel and get out.
	What level of music is appropriate, and for how much time? If the Minister can give us some idea about that, it is to be hoped that we will get an idea of at least what we should aspire to in the public service. Do the Government have any guidance for local authorities about shops or restaurants, taking into account the fact that in certain places that work on a quick turnover—for instance, a hamburger bar—maybe a bit of loud noise is desirable to get people to move on from their seats? Have the Government done any work on this?

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I am sure that we are all extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, for introducing this very important topic. The contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, were extremely interesting. I shall comment on their speeches later.
	When I first heard about the debate I went straight to Google and discovered that under the two words "piped music" there are 1,110,000 entries. As I flicked through—obviously, I did not look at all of them— one major thing emerged: the huge division of opinion on this subject. On the one hand I read about the organisation, Pipedown, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, which produces an extraordinarily interesting analysis of piped music—what is wrong with it, why it should not be used and why it should not be there. Other organisations say, "Stop it. Get rid of it. Ban it all". There are thousands of references to reference books on pubs and restaurants in Britain without piped music and a huge number of organisations which say that piped music is bad and that we ought to be able to get away from it. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of hotels whose websites present piped music as a positive benefit for someone going to stay in the relevant hotel. They say, "Come to our hotel. We have wonderful swimming pools, air conditioning and piped music". I came across a hotel in Arizona that—this is extraordinary—has piped music both inside and outside. The mind boggles on the implications of that.
	Speaking for myself, I loathe piped music. I find it intrusive and pointless. I totally disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, that piped music is played in libraries. Before I came to this House I was chairman of the Library and Information Commission. If the noble Lord produced one bit of evidence that piped music was played in any municipal or public library in the UK, I would be amazed.
	I was in a sushi bar with my son on Friday and, with this debate in mind, I asked him, "Why do you think they are playing piped music?". It was very loud and intrusive. He replied, "So that people don't have to talk to each other". There is an awful lot in that.
	The Department of Health's general advice on piped music is that there is no convincing peer-reviewed evidence that exposure to piped music causes significant harm to health, and that goes some way to answering the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. We recognise that for those with hearing aids, those particularly sensitive to noise or those who simply prefer silence, background music can be extraordinarily irritating. It is also accepted that people who are hard of hearing may find it more difficult to converse when piped music is playing.
	The Government take noise at work seriously and recognise that it can have significant health implications. Loud noise at work can cause hearing loss and tinnitus. Industries such as construction and engineering have significant noise health risks. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked what work had been done on acceptable noise levels. There is good evidence of a hazard to hearing from prolonged exposure to noise at levels down to 85 decibels over an eight-hour average. There is only some residual risk below that. At levels below 80 decibels—for example, from a speaker in a lift or lobby—there should not be a health and safety issue. We therefore need to keep piped music in perspective when set against major occupational noise health risks. That reflects the relative priorities for people dealing with noise at work and that there is no evidence of a health and safety risk from piped music—I wish there were.
	My noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath launched the new Control of Noise at Work Regulations and supporting guidance on 11 October 2005. The regulations aim to eliminate new cases of occupational deafness. They contain a general requirement to control noise at work to as low a level as is reasonably practicable, but the priority in terms of control measures is clearly the noisiest and therefore high-risk sectors. I commend the regulations as a proportionate way of managing the risk of deafness. They should also lead to fewer civil claims and less staff turnover.
	Piped music is unlikely to come under existing noise legislation unless it affects people outside one building and in another. Operators of buildings create the atmosphere that they want or that they think their users and visitors want. Sometimes piped music masks other, more undesirable, noises. Far more effective than legislating against piped music, which would be heavy-handed and difficult to enforce, would be for those people who dislike piped music to communicate that dislike to the operators of those buildings. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, made the point that various organisations, such as Tesco, have stopped using piped music because people who went there said, "We really do not want to shop in a place like that".
	More generally, noise is part of the Government's cleaner, safer, greener and respect agendas, and can be an example of anti-social behaviour. The biggest source of neighbourhood noise is noisy neighbours. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, mentioned some statistics on that. Research conducted in 2003 showed that two in three people—63 per cent—heard noise from their neighbours to some extent and were annoyed by it. Therefore, it is toward neighbourhood noise, and ambient noise from transport and industry, that government resources are directed.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, mentioned the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, which will, from 6 April 2006, give local authorities more powers to deal with noise from audible intruder alarms and more flexible noise enforcement options as part of a range of measures to improve local environmental quality. The Government are committed to the development and launch of strategies on neighbourhood noise and ambient noise from transport and industry by the end of 2007, and we will be consulting this year.
	The Government run a comprehensive research programme to inform noise policy—a point that was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Recent research includes a much-acclaimed methodology for assessing low-frequency noise—another issue besides piped music on which the UK Noise Association has expressed concern—and advice for local authorities and dog owners on barking dogs; research into a protocol for assessing noise from licensed premises to support the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 will be undertaken.
	The Government plan a campaign this summer aimed at particular segments of noise makers and sufferers to encourage behaviour change, many of whom may not realise the impact of their behaviour on others. The Government are keen to promote sensible regulation and sensible management of risks to health and safety. In a speech to the Health and Safety Executive's UK presidency conference on 18 October 2005, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath said:
	"Better regulation is about regulating in a way that is proportionate to the risks we need to manage, and is effective in delivering the outcomes we are trying to achieve".
	There is no evidence of a significant health and safety risk arising from piped music.
	It is said that there are many areas, such as transport terminals, trains, hospitals, workplaces or similar environments, where individuals such as in-patients, travellers and workers may not feel able to escape from piped music—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont. But it is also clear that where surveys have been conducted or the views of passengers, workers and users have been made known, the owners of those premises have often been persuaded to reduce the volume of piped music or to get rid of it altogether.
	In conclusion, the Government have accepted the recommendations of the Hampton report and the HSE is focusing on those health and safety risks that cause the greatest injury or ill health. There are new regulations to control noise at work and to help employers control significant occupational noise risks. The Government will this year consult on noise and the environment with regard to noise strategies on neighbourhood and ambient noise. Finally, the Government advocate sensible regulation and do not support moves that would take us nearer to a nanny state. Regulation is suitable only where there is a sound scientific evidence of risk and where current law does not adequately cover that risk. On balance, while piped music may certainly be an irritation, it is not an area in which the Government intend to regulate.
	I am grateful for these discussions. I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, said, and I wish him well in his campaign.